NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
June 1, 2008Reflections on Deuteronomy 11:18, 26-28, 32
Psalm 31:2-3, 3-4, 17, 25
Romans 3:21-25, 28
Matthew 7:21 - 27
by Mary Benet McKinney, O.S.B.
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Today’s Gospel passage is rich in imagery and practical wisdom. Two sets of words provide what we need to take us deep into the Word: rock and sand, hear and act.
The image of a storm is quite vivid. Rain falls, floods come, winds blow and destroy. Every night, it seems, we see the aftermath of tornados and hurricanes and all kinds of wild weather. But Jesus is not just providing a commentary on weather conditions. Life is filed with storms. Rain, floods, winds, attack us, beat us up, seek to destroy us. We are buffeted by storms. Some of them rage within us: doubts, fears, negative self images. Some of them attack us from outside of ourselves: circumstances that seem beyond our capacity to endure, angry words hurled at us from others, demands placed upon us. The question this gospel puts before is a challenging one. Are you storm proof or storm vulnerable? Holiness, Jesus is pointing out, is withstanding the storms. Not avoiding them. Not getting trapped in the thought that if we live right there will be no storms. It is the task that we call “spiritual work” that moves us through the storms of life, enables us to transcend them, to push beyond, to rise above, to exceed the usual limits that storms seek to impose on us.
Jesus explains this as not just hearing the word but doing it… being grounded in divine love and acting out of that awareness.
The transcendent self is always more than its circumstances. We are tempted to look at our weaknesses, our failures, our inadequacies. But if we allow love to integrate itself into our failures we will be doing the word not just hearing it.
It is my guess, based on my own lived experience, that when we hear the demand to “do the word” we think of actions. I “do” the word when I teach, care for, comfort, confront injustice, demonstrate, march or run for a cause. All actions that many of us can no longer accomplish. So does that mean we no longer “do” the word. Far from it! “Doing the Word” means withstanding the storms, and communicating the Word even as we know ourselves to be sinking. It means a life-long quest to find new ways to share life and love and Jesus with others. It means being storm proof rather than storm vulnerable.