Thursday, 12/3/15
In 1954, two
refugees from North Korea set out to build a two-room house to share with their
young wives, and I gave them a hand with it. (Forgive me for telling the same
story every time this Gospel comes up. )
We dug six
three-foot-deep holes for corner posts, and we hauled boulders up from the
river, dropping one in each ole. . We then bought great spools of U S.
communication wire on the Black Market.
That June I was
assistant to an old Irish priest with no use for me, so I joined the boys in
plastering mud for walls on that wire netting between the posts.
One of the boys, Peter, was about to
become a father; and to have her baby, he had to take his wife Teresa to her
parent’s house back in the hills. I stayed behind to help Paul in thatching the
roof.
We had things
tightened up, when we were hit by a typhoon that took out most of our roads
and bridges. It carried the police
station and many public buildings out into the harbor. And, after the home of Peter’s
wife washed away, the poor girl had her baby while clinging to a tree trunk high
on a mountain side.
Our house built on
stone stood strong.
Our Lord’s parable
about building on stone concludes his “Sermon on the Mount.” And, we often miss
out on its comparison of Our Lord’s New-Law teaching to the Old-Law teaching of
Moses.
Where Moses began
the Old Law with those famous one-liners, the Ten Commandments,“ Jesus
inaugurated the New Law with his own one-liners, the Beatitudes. “Blessed are
the poor in spirit,” “Blessed are the Meek,” “Blessed are they who hunger and
thrust after justice.”
In his Sermon on the
Mount Jesus was telling us that to stand firm through our storms, we must do
more than avoid adultery and avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain. We have to
love our neighbor as our self.
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