Planted and Built Up on Jesus Christ
Madrid 18 August 2011
Dear brother bishops, priests and deacons; dear consecrated women and men; dear young pilgrims gathered here; dear friends in Christ:
Introduction
What a blessing it is for us to be gathered from all corners of the world, here in the magnificent city of Madrid, to study and give witness to the beauty of our Catholic faith! As we prepare for our meeting this evening with Pope Benedict XVI, the Rock upon whom the Lord today is building up his Church (cf. Mt 16:18), we reflect on the theme he chose for this World Youth Day: planted and built up in Jesus Christ, firm in the faith (cf. Col 2:7).
Yesterday the catechesis focussed on faith, its importance in your life and how having trust in God and all he has revealed in Jesus Christ is the answer to the deepest yearnings of your heart. In a word, you heard repeated what we sang at the moving Opening Mass at Cibeles Square, when during Communion the words of St. Teresa of Avila rang out: “quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta: sólo Dios basta,” whoever has God lacks nothing: only God is enough – only God can satisfy us.
This morning we turn to the two scriptural images which illustrate our theme: that of being planted and of being built up – in Jesus Christ.
Foundation of Rock or Sand?
Let me now read you a short passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew, which comes at the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He tells us a parable which undoubtedly reflects his occupation as a carpenter, perhaps even a builder or small-time contractor. Listen carefully:
Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who builds his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall! (Mt 7:24-27; cf. Lk 47-49).
Here, as elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus tells us about the blessedness of those who hear the Word of God and keep it, like Mary, his Mother, and the misery of those who hear it but do not put it into practice. The Lord wants us to be both hearers and doers of the Word.
To drive his point home, Jesus tells this story about the need to build the right kind of foundation for a house if it is to withstand the harshness of the elements. And he invites us to take the role of a building contractor. Your life is like building a house, the house of your life. What kind of foundation are you providing for it?
Jesus places an alternative before you: to be wise by building on rock – a house that can resist rain and wind; or to be foolish by building on sand – a house that is weak and easily washed away by buffeting storms. The foolish person is the one who hears his voice but fails to act. There is no follow-through. Such a person’s house collapses.
Choice
In so many places Jesus speaks about the kind of choice that lies before us in building the house of our life. You can be “for” him or “against” him; you can walk on the narrow path that leads to happiness or the broad path that leads to destruction; you can build on solid rock or on shifting sands.
Dear World Youth Day pilgrims: you have many decisions to make with your life. You can decide who your friends will be, what sports you want to play, what you will study or where you will work. And you have bigger decisions to make: eventually, whether to be marry, become a priest or a Religious or a consecrated or single lay person in the world. These are grace-filled days, when Blessed John Paul II is watching over us in a special way from the window of his Father’s house. This time in Madrid, for many of you, will be decisive, setting you on a path that, in one way or another, will mark the rest of your life.
But all of you have one choice to make that is greater than all others, one that determines the way you will live and, eventually even the way you will die. That is the choice whether or not to build your house, your life, on rock, to follow him as his disciple – or not.
Building on a Rock-Solid Foundation
Of course in this parable from Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is not concerned about sound engineering practices but about the spiritual foundations on which we build our lives. Build on a rock-solid foundation; that is, on God, whom the Bible refers to frequently as our “Rock” (cf. Ps 19:14). As the invisible but real foundation, it is the Rock which keeps the house from falling down in the torrential storms of life.
If you build your life on this solid foundation, when difficulties arise, then you will remain intact. If, on the other hand, you build our life on a poor foundation, not giving the Lord the primacy he deserves as our Creator, then when the storms come, your life collapses into ruins.
A shaky foundation is one built on the pillars of the love of possessions, pleasure and power. Sooner or later they prove “incapable of fulfilling the deepest yearnings of the human heart. In building our lives we need solid foundations which will endure when human certainties fail.”[1] This brings us to the question: how do we build our house on a solid foundation, so that it does not collapse under the pressure of this world’s allurements?
Building on the rock means, first of all, to build on God, to build on Christ and with Christ. Jesus says: “Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock” (Mt 7:24). These are not just the empty words of some person or another; these are the words of Jesus. You are not listening to just any person: you are listening to God’s only Son. You are being asked to commit yourselves to building your life on Jesus Christ and his Word.[2]
To build on Christ and with Christ means to build with Someone who knows you better than you know yourself. It means to build with Someone who is always faithful. It means to build with Someone who constantly looks down on our wounded heart and says: “I do not condemn you, but go and sin no more” (cf. Jn 8:11). To build on Christ is to embrace Someone who, from the Cross, extends his arms and repeats for all eternity: “I give my life for you for only one reason: because I love you.” To build your life on Christ means saying to him, before your family, your friends, and anyone who will listen: “Lord, you know what is best for me. Only you have the words of eternal life (cf. Jn 6:68).
Building on the rock also means building on Someone who, during his lifetime, was spurned. In his First Letter, St. Peter writes of Christ as a “living stone rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious” (1 Pet 2:4). Often today Jesus is ignored or even mocked; he is declared a man of the past who is irrelevant for life today and tomorrow. If you encounter those who scorn the foundation on which you are building, do not be discouraged! For faith to grow strong, it must endure tests. A living faith must always grow – and it can only grow if it is purified in the crucible of suffering.[3]
Those who build on rock are aware that there will be trials and misfortunes. Jesus says: “The rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon the house” (Mt 7:25). This is inevitable. To expect Madrid’s hot and sunny August days in December would be foolish. Jesus doesn’t promise perfect weather, but he does say that a devastating wave will never sweep away what is most dear to us. Do not be surprised therefore by tough times or tribulations, whatever they may be, when all you can do is shout out like Peter to Jesus, “Lord, save me”
(Mt 14:3). They are a sign of God’s presence, not his absence. To build on rock means that you are always able to count on God: that in difficult times “there is no Rock like our God” (1 Sam 2:2).
Rooted in Christ Jesus through Baptism
A second image offered for our reflection from the Pope’s Message for this World Youth Day is that of being “rooted” or “planted” in Christ (cf. Col 2:7). This tells us of the closeness to which Jesus calls us. We are “grafted” onto him like branches to a vine, so that “apart from him we can do nothing” (cf. Jn 15:5), but that with him “all things are possible” (cf. Mt 19:26).
For a tree to be firmly planted, thanks to its roots, means that it can receive nourishment from the soil and can grow. The source of this growth is God. “From him we draw our life. Without him, we cannot truly live.”[4] Indeed, Jesus tells us that he himself is our life (cf. Jn 14:6) and that he has come to give us “life in abundance” (Jn 10:10). No people more than Christians, especially young Christians, are so full of life and vitality.
That life begins in your Baptism. This Sacraments sinks the roots of your life into Christ. In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul aptly expresses the meaning of Christian Baptism. “Do you not know,” he writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom 6:3). Being “baptized into Christ” means being spiritually rooted or immersed in his death, which is the act of God’s infinite love, capable of redeeming every person from the slavery of sin and death.[5]
Dear friends: Baptism is not simply a rite of your past, one through which you long ago became a child of God and member of the Church with your sins forgiven. You have not just been baptized; you are baptized.[6]
Not merely an event of your infancy, the Lord’s Death and Resurrection reaches out and seizes you today and every day. The Lord holds you firmly even when your own hands grow weak. You grasp hold of his hand, and become one with him. Just as St. Paul affirmed: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Through Baptism you give yourself over to Christ; your life now belongs to him and no longer to yourself. He takes you to himself – so that you no longer live for yourself, but through him, with him and in him.[7] Being one with him and his Body, the Church, you are now never
alone, even at the moment of death, for you are united to the Risen One who has conquered death and lives for ever.
When the Risen Lord plants us in the soil of his own life, he draws us to himself. He leads us through the often murky sea of our lives, where we are frequently in danger of being uprooted. In Baptism he leads us on the path that passes through the Red Sea of this life and introduces us to the everlasting life of the Promised Land. His hand is always there to guide us and, for his part, he never lets go. Whatever may happen in life, whatever tragedy or disappointment or trial may befall us, let us, for our part, never lose hold of the hand of the Lord Jesus.[8]
Baptism also brings with it an imperative, a divine command. In his description of the effects of Baptism, the Apostle Paul wrote: “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light” (Eph 5:8). At this stage in your life as young adults, it is now up to you to make God’s gift to you Baptism your own: to become a true Christian; that is to be a friend of Jesus, to love him and to please him.[9]
Drawn into the Circle of the Friends of Jesus
Baptism calls you to live in the light of Christ, to be “holy and blameless in God’s sight” (cf. Eph 1:4).
Dear friends: I urge you during this great World Youth Day pilgrimage to recommit yourself – or, perhaps, to commit yourself for the first time – to holiness, to the imitation of Christ. Discover the joy of living a Christ-centred life.[10] “It is in loving friendship with him that the fullness of life is to be found.”[11]
For the Holy Father, following the road laid out by the beloved Blessed John Paul II, the key to being a holy disciple is being a “friend” of Jesus. “No longer do I call you servants,” Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper, “for the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15). This is the foundation of your joy: a personal relationship with Jesus “encountered, followed, known and loved.”[12]
Jesus chose his disciples above all “to be with him” (Mk 3: 14); that is, they were “to share in his life and learn directly from him not only the style of his behaviour, but above all who he really was. Only in this way, taking part in his life, could they get to know him and subsequently, proclaim him,”[13] giving witness to him as a person. Mere intellectual knowledge of Christ and his doctrine – essential as that is – is insufficient if you want to know Jesus Christ. Moreover, he wants your friendship; he wants you to abide with him.
For this friendship to grow, St. Paul says that you must have “the same mind . . . that was in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). In fact, friendship means sharing in the thoughts and the will of the other person. This means that you should “know Jesus in an increasingly personal way, listening to him, living with him, staying with him.”[14]
Following Christ Jesus
The expression “following of Christ” describes the whole of Christian life.
With the first disciples, it meant that to follow Jesus those called gave up their profession and their whole life as they had known it. The fundamental content of this following was accompanying Christ as their Teacher and their total entrustment to his guidance. The “following” was therefore something both external and, at the same time, internal. The exterior aspect was walking behind Jesus on his journeys through Palestine; the interior was the total abandonment of their will to that of Jesus. From then on, being at his disposal was the heart of life as a disciple.
For us, to be disciples likewise means to share in the life of the Master, to live in obedience to his Word. Life with Jesus, however, went beyond obedience, since they were no longer just servants but also friends (cf. Jn 15:15).
As followers and disciples, you too have been called to friendship to the compelling person of Jesus, who is just as alive – in the glory of his risen life – as the man encountered by the original disciples in Palestine. To be a disciple of Jesus is to follow him, and this is what Christian life is: the following of Christ under the guidance of the Church. The root of discipleship is communion with Jesus and imitation of him: being his follower and his friend. To attempt friendship without first following is foolishness. To attempt discipleship without friendship is to adopt a way of life, but it is not to live as one who is a “child of God” (cf. 1 Jn 3:1) and a “partaker of the divine nature” (cf. 2 Pt 1:4).
Following Christ, therefore, entails an interior change of life, the taking on of that new “mind” (cf. Phil 2:5). It requires that you no longer withdraw into yourself, considering your own fulfilment as the main purpose of life. To follow Christ is to make the fundamental decision to renounce riches, career or success as the ultimate goals of your life. Because there is a cost to discipleship, following Jesus demands that you give yourself freely to God who, in Jesus Christ, will go before you and show you the way. By losing yourself, you find yourself – your true self.[15]
This willingness to abandon yourself into the loving hands of Christ, to follow him perseveringly, does not abolish your freedom or tie you down. On the contrary, it frees you to become the person you have been called to be. In his first great homily as Pope, the Holy Father affirmed:
If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. . . . Dear young people: do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life.[16]
Entrusting yourselves to Christ, you lose nothing, but you gain everything. He loves you for what you are, in your frailty and your weakness, so that, touched by his love, you may be transformed.[17]