Hearth & Altar

The house built on rock and the house built on sand look identical until the storm comes. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and buffeted - and the difference between the two houses only becomes visible when they are tested. The house on rock did not collapse. The house on sand did.

Jesus closes the Sermon on the Mount with this image. The whole teaching - the Beatitudes, the salt and light, the antitheses, the Lord's Prayer, the do-not-worry, the narrow gate - all of it is the description of the rock. Hearing and doing. Not one or the other. Both.

Not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom. The ones Jesus turns away are not the openly irreligious - they are the ones who prophesied in his name, drove out demons, did mighty deeds. The impressive religious performance is not the rock. The doing of the Father's will is.

The first deportation to Babylon has the same structure: Jehoiachin's house had the performance of kingship without the substance. The temple treasures were carried off - the gold utensils Solomon had made - as the Lord had foretold. The prophets had been saying this was coming. The hearing was not followed by the doing.

• For our family, that the hearing would be followed by the doing - that the household built on rock would be visible when the storm comes, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who have been performing the religious life without the substance of doing the Father's will, that the storm would reveal the foundation in time to rebuild, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who are currently in the storm, that the rock they built on would hold, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that teaches with authority - not as the scribes, but as the one who is the rock, we pray to the Lord.

Whoever hears these words of mine and acts on them. Pick one teaching from the Sermon on the Mount from this week. Not the one you most like - the one you have been hearing without acting on. Do one act of doing it this week. The house is built one brick at a time, one act of hearing-and-doing at a time.

The house on rock and the house on sand look the same until the storm. Teach your children that the life of faith is built on what they do with what they hear, not what they say or how they appear. The question to ask regularly: am I hearing this and also doing it?