Thursday, 12/1/11
At the end of his Sermon on the Mount Jesus said that those who lived their lives in accord with his sermon would be like people who built their house on rock , and would be rewarded by seeing no trials would be too much for them. It might help to summarize Our Lord’s teaching in the three chapters of his sermon.
In Matthew Chapter Five Jesus gave us the Beatitudes, then he outlined seven ways in which we must go beyond the standards set by Moses. For instance, Moses said we should not kill, but Jesus sad we should not even be angry.
In Matthew Chapter Six we hear Jesus telling us to pray, fast and do good works not to impress people, but to please our heavenly Father.
In Matthew Chapter Seven we read how Jesus advised us not to judge others, and to follow the Golden Rule in treating others as we would like to be treated.
I often tell the story about a hurricane hitting my coastal parish in Korea in the summer of 1944. In May I had helped two young men build a house for their two young families. We began by digging deep holes at all the corners. We fixed the four-by-four uprights atop heavy boulders we dropped in the holes.
Before we had the roof thatched one of the young men had to take his wife to her parent’s house, because she was giving birth to their firstborn. The girl ended up hanging on to a pine tree high on a hillside as she gave birth to her daughter, because the storm had taken away the house of her parents. The house we built on those rocks withstood the storm, and we all lived happily ever after.
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