How Do You Get a Solid Foundation?

Image by Joris Heise

The Good News for the Day, September 10, 2022
Saturday of the Twenty-third Week of Ordinary Time (491)

The Gospel

Examples of Inner and Outer Health

Jesus says to you and me His students: “A healthy tree doesn’t produce rotten fruit. And an unhealthy tree doesn’t give healthy produce. You know a plant by the kind of fruit it produces.

And people don’t pick figs from among thorn bushes. Neither do people gather grapes from among prickly thickets.

Image by Joris Heise

Out of their heart-pantry of goodness, a good person brings good stuff.  A person brings out evil stuff from their pantry of evil. It is, after all, from the fullness of the heart that the mouth produces what it does

“Why do you call on me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but don’t do what I tell you to do?

ll you to? I will show you what someone is like – someone comes to me, hears what I say, and acts on what is heard. That individual is like a builder of a house. They dug deeply and laid the house’s foundation on rock. When flooding came, the river rose against that house but could not jar it from its foundation. It had been well built.

The other kind of individual, though, hears but does NOT act on what the Message. It is like somebody building their house on sandy ground where there is no solid foundation. When the river flooded up against it, the house collapsed all at once. It was demolished.” (Luke 6)

Reflections of the Word of God

“She Has it Together”

Sometimes adults describe a friend by saying, “She has it all together.”

We see in a few people a sense of integrity, consistency, and peace that is admirable. What such people were yesterday, they are today. Their honesty is without doubt. They do not seem to make missteps of any major kind. If they say they will do something, it gets done.

Jesus is describing such people. What is inside their hearts they reveal in their behavior. Like healthy, good trees they produce good fruit. Not “prickly people,” they produce straightforward nourishment – the grapes and figs which Jesus mentions. In nourishing us, they do not include nasty little barbs of irritation. When it comes to whether they are “solid people,” they are houses built on solid foundations.

How Did They Get There?

Somehow, I suggest, they came to see how richly common they are. To do what is right,  such individuals understand how not to let their ego override their behavior . They nourish reflection.

These folks, like you and me, keep searching their soul, so that their inner “pantry” becomes permanently stocked with truth. Not afraid to be themselves, their inner soul is at peace.

You get there by accepting God’s world however comfortable or uncomfortable you may find it. Mysteries, contradictions, discomfort, hostility, challenges you accept them all as part of life. Everyone around you has the same world you have, but so many are so angry, so constantly irritated. It is such a waste.

The importance here

The Good News reminds you and me to nurture our inner world. You and I work to make our inner world integrated with our outward behavior

In our private, inner world, truths about ourselves echo and mirror our neighbors, our fellow children of God. We are like them in their spiritual struggles and share in so many achievements and frustrations. Such knowledge of them provides knowledge of ourselves.

You and I, though flawed, accept  uncomfortable self-knowledge as the cost of growing in faith and love. Self-knowledge, prayerful self-questioning  and the self-limitations that result set the solid foundation of a permanent – eternal – life of peace. That integirty of inner spirituality and outer actions build your character as a child of God in the Family of God..