By: By Sister Rachel Bergschneider, OSB

Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, March 6

Deuteronomy 11:18,26-28; Psalm 31:2-3,3-4,17,25; Romans 3:21-25,28; Matthew 7:21-27

A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her 5- and 6-year-olds. After explaining the commandment to “Honor thy father and thy mother,” she asked, “Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?” Without missing a beat, one little boy answered, “Thou shall not kill.”

Children often get to the heart of the matter. They can also be so literal that meaning is obscured. It is easy to lose balance and exaggerate meaning.

As we hear in the readings today, though the law testifies to the righteousness of God, Jesus’ redemptive act goes beyond the law to a new relationship with God. It is a balance we have wrestled with for five centuries — faith and works.

The first reading today instructs us, “Take these words of mine into your heart and soul. . . . I set before you here, this day, a blessing and a curse: a blessing for obeying the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I enjoin on you today; a curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord, your God.” God’s word must permeate our very being for us to “get” what obedience is.

The Gospel is clear that we are responsible to God for our choices: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built a house on rock. . . .” Taking in the word of God and following its directives is the way to build that house that resists the tides of selfishness that creep into our life.

BALANCING FAITH, WORKS
St. Paul, in the second reading, gives us a very insightful bridge between Deuteronomy and Matthew. He is quite explicit in saying that “we are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3 27) He goes on to say “for we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Paul never throws away the law; he simply understands that the law, in itself, will not save. He understands that works alone will not save.

So how do we balance faith and works? We respond in obedience to God out of love. Love and faith are at the heart of good works.

It is a temptation for us to so focus on our end of the relationship with God that we think what we do is the measure of our salvation. Nothing that we do for God can adequately repay or merit God’s love. What we do is simply a loving response to the incredible blessing that God offers in Jesus — the gift of total self-giving, unconditional love.

If we are able to respond with our actions in only a small way to that love, our actions will be built on rock, and the rains, floods, and winds of life, though buffeting us, will never collapse the solid relationship that God extends to us each moment of our lives.

If we can surrender in trust to God, who offers us everything, we can be assured that our small response to that love will surely be a blessing and we will be able to live in peace . . . even with our brothers and sisters.

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Sister Rachel Bergschneider, OSB, is a member of the Sisters of St. Benedict of St. Mary Monastery in Rock Island. She serves as pastoral associate at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Peoria Heights.