Today's Gospel

Build on Rock

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we take a moment to reflect on the gospel together, allow the Holy Spirit to guide us towards a word, a phrase, or an idea that we can take into the day with us and live and reflect upon. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Matthew 7:21-29. Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?" And then I will declare to them, "I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers." Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon the house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like the foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell. And great was the fall. And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.

What is it that jumps out at you today? It's a great image. It's a great parable. You've got the wise man building his house on rock, and you've got the foolish man building his house on sand. Which one are you? Which one am I? The truth is both. I'm both and you're both. I've been both many times, and you have probably been both many times because there are many houses we build in our lives. A young man came to me recently trying to work out discerning about who to marry and trying to work out, "Okay. What is that wise foundation to build a relationship on?" And at the end of the day, that's character, right? That's character. That's virtue. That's the rock. Everything else is going to fade and go away at the end of the day, but the rock is character and virtue. And that's one of the houses we build in this life. We build a career house. Do we build it with an organization that is wise or an organization that is foolish? Is the organization built on rock, or is the organization built on sand? We build friendships, right? Each friendship, we're building. And some friendships are built on rock and some friendships are built on sand, and we make those decisions.

And so you can see that we're constantly either the wise builder or the foolish builder. We're constantly making this choice in our lives. You're going to go out there and build something today. It might be something small. It might be just spending some time with one of your children. And what are you going to build? You're just going to build a conversation. But is that conversation going to be built on rock, or is it going to be built on sand? Is it going to have some substance, some meaning, some purpose, or is it just going to be sort of shallow and superficial? We're going to go out of there in the world today. We're going to build something. Let's build it on rock. Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.