A Christian life founded on appearances collapses when a storm comes, warned Pope Francis, during the celebration of Mass at Casa Santa Marta on December 5, 2019.
Commenting on the Gospel of the day (Matthew 7:21.24-27) where Jesus compares the foreseeing man who built his house on a rock and the foolish man who built his on sand, the Holy Father reflected on “wisdom and weakness.”
The Lord is the rock, he affirmed. “He who entrusts himself to the Lord will always be secure, because his foundations are on the rock. It’s what Jesus says in the Gospel. He speaks of a wise man that built his home on a rock, namely, on trust in the Lord, on serious things. This trust is a noble material, because the foundations of this construction of our life are solid, strong.”
As to the foolish man who preferred the sand: “Our life can also be like that, when my foundations aren’t strong,” he observed. “The storm arrives — and we all have storms in our life, all of us, from the Pope to the last, all — and we can’t endure.
To those that think “that to change life means to turn to makeup,” the Pope retorts: “to change life is to change the foundations of one’s life, setting them on the rock that is Jesus. “I would like to restore this construction, this palace, because it’s very ugly and I would like to embellish it a bit and consolidate its foundations.” However, if I just redo the makeup . . . it will fall. With appearances, life collapses,” he stressed.
‘We cannot build our life on passing things, on appearances, on the fact of making it seem that everything is going well. Let’s go to the rock, where our salvation is. And there, we will all be happy,” concluded the Holy Father.
