Reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, none of those who cry out, lord, lord, will enter the kingdom of god, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven. Anyone who hears my words and puts them into practice is like the wise man who built his house on solid rock. When the rainy season came and the torrents set in and the winds blew and buffeted that house, it did not collapse. It had been solidly set on rock.
Anyone who hears my words but does not put them into practice, is like a foolish man who built his house on sand, sandy ground. The rains fell, torrents came, the winds blew and lashed against that house. It collapsed under all of the weather and was completely ruined. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
One of the things our lord told us was to pray always. And I urged you a few days ago to turn that command into action. And the first thing I had had I suggested was organized formal prayer. I can't overstress it. And at times it's going to be the most worrisome, even the most repulsive thing you do.
I'm not exaggerating this. The thing is, do you do it? And it's just that moments and periods in our life when prayer and turning to God seems downright repulsing. Not that we're just negative about it, that we most need it. And you see, I you say this is this is crazy stuff.
Is it? Think of Jesus Christ on the cross. That's all. When he said that when he cried out, my god, my god, why have you abandoned me? That was that was the son of god on his cross.
So nobody you see, people will tell you that prayer is so easy. I mean, some will. And it's so natural, and it's such a uplifting thing, and we recite the twenty third Psalm, and then we take wings and get on cloud nine. Sometimes that happens, but don't expect it as the norm. That's the grievous mistake.
Don't look upon that as if that were the ordinary thing, because it is not. And the lives of the saints all prove it, including the son of God. The second kind of prayer or second way of praying, as I try to stress, was turning our daily lives into worship. And you do that by your own act of recognition of God and of your will turning it over to him. Now, it's very difficult to see God in the burning bush all the time.
Sometimes, all we see is the burning bush. And let me tell you, we we we emphasize, there's no question about it, we emphasize the rough spots of life, the tragedies, the sorrows, the griefs. And yet, it's it by and large, it's not those things in life which most often drive us away from God. It's the good things of life. When things are going fine, when we look around us and say, all I have to do now is to build barns enough to hold my luscious harvest.
And then when my barns are filled and almost bulging with with the good things of this world, then I can relax and say I've got it made. And you know what our Lord said about that man? He was a fool. And yet, as I've said many times in this pulpit, I have seen more lives ruined by success than I have by failure and tragedy. Now, I'm not exaggerating that, and I don't I don't want to exaggerate.
I don't wanna overdo it. I'm just saying that's been my experience. It's so easy to forget God when everything is going well. And yet, it's just as important to remember God in the good things of life, to offer him those good things of life, to offer him our joys, the things that makes us glad and happy and the rewarding things. When we're on cloud nine, let us sing hallelujahs.
And you can't sing sing hallelujah without saying praise God. That's what the word means. Praise God. And that's recognizing. It's not always easy because the things are the good things of this world, God's own creatures, have a way of enslaving us and blinding us and turning us away from God.
Whereas in many instances, life, not always by a long shot, but often enough, life's tragedies turn us to God. And we take recourse in the twenty third Psalm. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. So I come back to that opus day, the work of the Lord.
Put your feet on the floor beside your bed, and before you do it, say your morning offering. And in that morning offering, you say, I offer you all my works and sufferings of this day. Now this is difficult. If you've got a terrible pain in some part of your body, if you're sick, if you're miserable, you're in no condition to say, Oh God, you may not even be able to say that. And I'm not exaggerating.
But try. But try. And there will be moments when you'll succeed. And those moments when you do succeed will be will carry over in those very dark times when you won't. And that's when we need the help of the church.
You notice every mass we say, we pray with the church. There are going to be times in your life when you can't pray for yourself. Believe me. Then when you then when you if you have any consciousness at all, you can rely that that you are being prayed for. You are a member of this vast body.
And think of this, it's not just your friends around who may know that you're in need of spiritual help. Oh, no. Think of the church triumphant, those men and women who have gone ahead of you and have made it and are now with God. Think of the church suffering, These men and women who have in a sense made it, but not completely. They're your company.
They're your friends, and you now desperately need a helping hand, and you have it. You have it. And that's why it's important that we who are in a position of praying, that we who are in a position of offering all our works and sufferings of this day and our joys, I want to add. That we are contributing to that treasure of the church, as we used to say. The treasure of the church when we are down and out, we can draw upon it.
And so I emphasize, just as I say, remember, if you do not think of God, if God is not part of your wake waking day, if it is not part of your work, of your recreation, of your fun, of your sleeping, of your eating, and everything else that goes into your daily life, If God is not part of it, then what fraction of your life is God a part of? And the answer is he should be in the totality of my life. Now that I'm not being silly and saying that you've gotta be thinking of God all the time, of course not. It's impossible. If you're trying to lay a good course of bricks, you've gotta be putting your attention on that job of laying the bricks.
And the best thing you can do is to lay a good course of bricks. But the opus dei can be the praise of the Lord. That to work is to pray. The old Benedictine going all the way back to the fifth century is a Benedictine motto, to work is to pray. But that are you going to offer God a bum job?
A miserable job? A job that's that that you don't put your attention to it or your best skills or try to improve yourself on. You give God the best. Even the Greek, you know the old story of the Greek sculptor who was paying paying a tremendous attention to the details of a statue way up in the top of the temple on the Acropolis. Someone came along and said, why are you bothering with?
Nobody's going to see that. And the sculptor said, God will. See, I say we ought to have more respect for the pagans that we have. And so in our lives, we ask we turn our lives over to God. That was done in baptism.
See, it's been done for you. But you have to renew that day in and day out. And not only that, during the day, think of what you are living for. What is life all about? Why are you doing this?
Whether it be something great and pleasant and happy and joyous, or whether it's something it's miserable and you'd like to get a million miles away from it. Think it, why am I doing this? And if you can say, I'm doing it for God, the two things come out of that least. That you won't fail, his grace will not fail you. The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not want.
And the second thing is, you're picking up your cross, and you're following Jesus. And he said if you do that, you will find that cross sweet and his burden light. May it be so. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.