250 success were nil. And yet, attracted by the true witness of our holy men’s lives, which were based on their trust in God alone, the successors stepped forward because they could see the Lord working in them and their confi dence in their action and their ministry, which fl owed from the power of the Holy Spirit. What is it that must happen in us so that we may be similarly marked by the light of God? Today’s Gospel gives us an answer. “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Mt 7:24). These words sum up the Sermon on the Mount. We all know what is says: love your enemies, turn the other cheek, look at women without egotistic lust; it provides many evangelical counsels, which advise us to give to beggars, to share with the needy, not to turn away from the borrower! Isn’t Jesus asking something in His Sermon on the Mount which cannot be fulfi lled? We’ll fi nd our answer in Jesus’ appeal to pray: “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret” (Mt 6:7). And then, after each series of commandments, Jesus repeats as a refrain: “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you” (Mt 6:4). Above all, the Sermon on the Mount calls us to such a prayerful unity with God, in which our trust in the Heavenly Father is born. This makes us like Him. God, in whom we seek our foundation, will always give His grace. This turns the Sermon on the Mount, which would be impossible to fulfi ll on human terms, possible. In this way, we build our house, our life on rock, the rock which is Christ Himself, the living and omnipresent Savior, who sends His Spirit and revives the Church from within. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount does not horrify us with its impossibility because it supposes our conscientious relying on the power of God which is communicated to us daily, and not on our own powers. What seems impossible will become possible if only we will daily renew our act of faith. Through faith, we will create room for God’s grace in our hearts. Only by being strong in God, will we become impervious to worldly infl uences. Such a change will come to pass in our hearts, that it will unveil something of the invisible God in us and through us, wherever we shall live and work. Let us pray that our present Convention will help us to build our house on rock. Our house is fi rstly the life of each one of us. Our house is our Congregation, to which God has called us. Let us ask for the help of the Holy Spirit that we may heed and accept the word that God wishes to give us during this Convention. Let us desire to see those aspects in our own lives and in our Congregation, which we build by ourselves on sand. Let us ask the Lord to make the necessary changes in us, to transform our hearts, to give us strength so that we won’t fear choosing what’s diffi cult, as long as it conforms to our fi delity to Jesus and our charism. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…” (Mt 7:21). We must not only talk about our charism, but live by
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