Jesus said to his disciples:—¨
—Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’—¨
will enter the kingdom of heaven,—¨
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.—

These words, from God, call us to forcefully acknowledge the true source of our life, the thing that sets us apart and makes us a people of God. That thing is lived faith in Jesus Christ. As St. Paul tells us:

They are justified freely by his grace
through the redemption in Christ Jesus,—¨
whom God set forth as an expiation, —¨
through faith, by his blood.—¨
For we consider that a person is justified by faith

St. Paul begins by recounting the fact that all have sinned. Even the saints sinned. Paul himself was tortured by temptation to sin, even after he received the revelation of Christ and put his old ways behind him. The presence of sin and temptation to sin is a constant, and without our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus we would be without hope.

St. Paul tells us that God’s answer to his prayer that temptation leave him was: “My grace is sufficient for you.” In like manner we have God’s grace. Like Paul we must not stop at having grace, but rather we must respond to grace, we must act upon it.

By God’s grace we are not left orphaned and alone, left out on an open sea, to be buffeted all the day and night, with no hope of ever reaching the shore. By this gift of grace we have all that we need to respond in the way that guarantees everlasting life.

Faith then is the wise person’s response to God’s grace, to God calling us to Himself. Faith is the entry way to a transformative existence, an existence that makes all that Jesus Christ said and did real and powerful in our lives, and in the life of the world. Faith is the acknowledgment of God as our Father, His will as our will, and heaven as our home.

Brothers and sisters,

We are called to transformation, to being the actual and present people of God in this world. To do so we need to consciously understand Jesus Christ as reality.

Christ is real and alive. Jesus is in heaven and is among us. Unfortunately, in our Western way of thinking, in our conditioning at school and at work, we tend to look at things as — things. It is very easy to fall into that way of thinking when we consider Jesus, Holy Scripture, and the Holy Church. We tend to view Jesus, Scripture, and the Church as something outside of us, rather than as something that is part of us, part of our very being.

We might be tempted to look at Jesus as far removed, as no longer existing in our realm. After all, we saw Him ascend to the Father. We may see Him as removed from our reality, up there, rather than as the One who lives in and walks with us.

We might be tempted to see Holy Scripture as a nice piece of writing, interesting stories and poetry, and a sort of treatise best left to historical analysis and philosophical inquiry.

We might be tempted to look upon the Holy Church as an out-of-touch corporation, governed by committees and men in funny looking clothes.

That is what Moses cautioned against. When he said:

—Take these words of mine into your heart and soul.
Bind them at your wrist as a sign,
and let them be a pendant on your forehead.—¨

…he meant to tell us that we must keep the reality of God ever before us. To this day Orthodox Jews wear Tefillin so that the Word of God becomes part of them, so that it is attached to them and is ever before them.

The Tefillin are symbolic of what must occur in our lives, as part of the new and everlasting covenant. In the new covenant Jesus lives with us, transforms us into His body, the Church, and teaches us through Holy Scripture. Our response in faith is our transformation; into people who do something vital, that is the work of God. We are to live and act as people of God, making what we know real and apparent to the world.

My friends,

Our faith response makes us free, from sin, from disbelief, and most of all from apartness from God. We become new men and new women, people who live as if Jesus Christ were standing right next to them — because He is. By our act of faith we are regenerated and by that faith we live new lives. In those new lives we bear witness, to our families, to our co-workers, to our club members, to the world.

Moses said:

—I set before you here, this day, a blessing and a curse—

The blessing is making the choice for God, being regenerated, being transformed into people who actively live and do what God wills and teaches. The curse is living in captivity to the world and to our base selves, to living as if God is far off and apart from us, something that doesn’t see or hear, and may not even exist.

The choice, the regeneration, the transformation, our being called by the grace of God, and our response in faith, are the keys. Those who grab hold of those keys and live in and with God, who really live as children of the Father, and who do so actively, will be the ones who hear Jesus say:

You are the wise one who listen[ed] to these words of mine and act[ed] on them. You built your house on rock.

Amen.