Building Our Life on the Rock of God’s Word and God-the-Word-Made-Flesh, 23rd Saturday (II), September 10, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Saturday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
September 10, 2022
1 Cor 10:14-22, Ps 116, Lk 6:43-49

Today’s homily was not recorded. The following points were attempted: 

• Today, at the end of his Sermon on the Plain, Jesus summarizes how we’re supposed to respond to what he’s taught with two images. The first is of a good tree and good fruit. If we root ourselves in Christ and in his word, we will bear good fruit as naturally as a good tree does. But if we don’t really root ourselves in the gift of his word by seeking to live his teaching, then we will bear bad fruit. He states that just as we don’t harvest figs from thorn bushes or grapes from brambles, if we wish to have a yield of the fruit of charity it comes from being a good tree rooted in the Lord. If we ground ourselves in earthly ambitions, spiritual worldliness, vices and other things, however, we will reap what is sown, the evil fruit that grows out of an evil tree.
• The second image is of a house. Jesus calls us not just to cry out “Lord, Lord,” but to do what he commands, to build our life on his word. If we do so, we will be like a wise man who built himself on rock, something sturdy that would withstand storms and floods. If we try to take a short cut, however, to take the easy way out by building our house on the sands that would be left in the dry river beds during the drought season, when eventually the rain comes anew, the house will be washed away. God’s word is the rock on which we should be constructing our existence. When we’ve made the effort to build ourselves on that firm foundation that we will remain faithful and fruitful when the storms come.
• St. Paul was someone who was a tree firmly rooted in the Lord that bore fruit in due season, someone who built his entire life on Christ and was able to remain faithful in the midst of persecution, stoning, beatings, imprisonment, shipwrecks, suffering for the churches and more. He was also one who sought to help others build themselves firmly — individually and in communion — on Christ. We can’t be divided within or without. That’s what St. Paul was pointing out in today’s first reading, his first letter to the Christians in Corinth. Throughout this letter, he’s pointing out the importance of integrity, to recognize that to unite ourselves to Christ means to separate ourselves from everything that’s incompatible with Christ. If we’re really built on Christ, he said, we can’t pretend that we’re building our existence on Paul, or Cephas or Apollo. If we’re really united to Christ, we can’t unite ourselves to a prostitute. And in today’s Gospel, he says if we’re united to Christ we can’t go to fundraising dinners in pagan temples eating meat sacrificed to idols. “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup or demons,” he says. “You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and also the table of demons.” Our yes to God must involve a no to whatever is incompatible with God. That’s the first condition if we’ve built our life on God, that to say “Lord, Lord,” means that we’ve really made him the Lord of all the parts of our life and that we are cutting out from our life whatever is incompatible.
• The second condition if we’re building our lives on God that we’re building on Christ in the Holy Eucharist. This is even more important during this time of Eucharistic Revival in the Church in the USA. “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ?,” he says. “The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the Body of Christ?” It is through holy communion that we root ourselves sacramentally in Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh. It’s the way we build our whole life on him as our rock and fortress against the storms that may come in the world. To make Jesus the root, center, source and summit of our life, as the Second Vatican Council urges, is to prioritize him in the Eucharist.
• But there’s a third condition. When we construct our existence on Christ, because his mystical body is made out of living stones, we are building ourselves together with others. St. Paul points to that today in the excerpt of his letter to the Corinthians when he says, “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one Body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” The Eucharist brings us into communion not only with Jesus but with others. The real effect of Holy Communion is to make us “one body, one spirit in Christ.” This union with others will strengthen us when the going gets tough.
• Today as we prepare to receive the one cup of blessing and one loaf, we ask the Lord Jesus, in uniting us to Him and to each other, to help us to live the truths of the faith he taught and lived, so that building our lives on the rock no matter how stormy the seas, we may become sturdy trees that bear fruit in every season and come to experience forever the joy of the house that God the Father has built for us on the rock of his beloved Son.

The readings for today’s Mass were: