Dec 2: House Built on a Rock

Hans Sebald Lautensack: Great Castle on a Rock

Thursday of the First Week of Advent
Gospel: Mt 7:21, 24-27

‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock (NRSV, Mt 7:24-25).’

Father, at every moment of our lives, even from that first moment in our mother’s womb, you offer us the gift of your divine life. You challenge us to accept it, to say “yes” to you, a challenge that confronts us over and over again at every moment of our existence. The “yes,” our acceptance, means that we receive your gift into our very being, so that it transforms everything that we are, that it fills our being, going out from us to others in acts of love and service.

The author of your Epistle of James writes about a faith in you that is not made manifest in a transformation of our being that flows out to others. Such a faith without good works, he writes, is dead. Your apostle Paul would argue that it is not faith at all.

Lord, our lives only take on real significance, real substance, when they are filled and made strong by your life. You are the rock, the fortress, which alone can make our lives endure in goodness and power.

Father, there is naught that we can do on our own. Without you we are nothing. Enlighten us and empower us to believe in you with a faith that is not dead, to say “yes” to your ever offered gift of divine life so that our lives, built on your rock, may also be rock for others.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.