Saturday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel text (Lk 6:43-49)
Today, the Lord surprises us by doing a bit of “advertising” for Himself. Now, I don’t mean to scandalize anyone with that statement. What diminishes great and supernatural realities is our earthly kind of advertising. We tend to look at advertising with suspicion because it often promises the impossible: “Lose five or six pounds in just a few weeks with this miracle product!” or other such “too-good-to-be-true” claims.

But when Someone has a “product” that is guaranteed one hundred percent, and—like the Lord—doesn’t sell it for money but simply asks us to believe in Him and take Him as our guide and model for a very specific way of life, then that kind of “advertising” shouldn’t surprise us. In fact, it’s the most legitimate kind of advertising in the world. Wasn’t Jesus the greatest “advertiser” of all when He declared about Himself: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6)?

Today He tells us that whoever “comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them” is wise—“like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock” (Lk 6:47-48). That house stands strong and solid, able to withstand the pounding storms. On the other hand, the one who builds without that kind of wisdom will soon find himself surrounded by rubble. And if he happened to be inside when the floodwaters struck, he would not only lose his home but possibly his very life.

But it’s not enough to simply come near to Jesus. We need to listen attentively to His teaching and, above all, put it into practice. After all, the merely curious may also draw near to Him, as might the heretic, the historian, or the student of languages. But it is only by coming close, listening carefully, and most importantly, living out the doctrine of Jesus that we can build up the true edifice of Christian holiness—for the encouragement of fellow pilgrims and for the glory of the heavenly Church.