The two parables offered by Our Lord in the Gospel today offer us a way to deepen our appreciation of the spiritual life.
after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’
The question, of course, is; why should anyone spend one’s own resources to lay the foundation of a tower, when the foundation of our tower ought to be Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? As Saint Paul teaches us in his first letter to the Corinthians (3:11),
no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.
In fact, Our Lord asks that we consider His words our firm foundation:
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock (Mt 7: 24-25).
If we found our lives on the rock which is the confession that of Peter – “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16) – we will be able to build a tower that reaches up to heaven. Unlike the tower of Babel, which aimed to give glory to its builders, a tower of virtuous living, built on the living foundation of the Son of Man who died, and was resurrected, will give glory to Our Father in heaven (Mt 5:16).
The fact is, that Our Lord does not expect us to build the tower by ourselves, but offers to do so much of the heavy lifting for us. As He promised in the Gospel according to John (14:2):
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
In other words, if we accept Him as our foundation, and work with Him by leading a holy life on earth, He will work with us to ensure we have a place in heaven. And this is important, my dear brothers and sisters, for heaven is the only club which is worth getting into.
Getting into this club, however, involves certain renunciations, the conditions for holiness. As Our Lord continues to teach us today,
anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.
Friends in Christ, when we hear these words, our minds are often taken to the episode of the rich young man who “went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Mt 19:22). We think instantly of the material goods we may have, and we viscerally understand how that young man may have felt. Our Lord, asks for too much.
However, it is not only the material renunciation that Our Lord is thinking of, and in fact, He is thinking of much more! What Our Lord asks of us is to recognize that everything we have has been given to us by Him, and we should, considering Him our foundation, return them back to Him, and follow Him.
Pray the Suscipe prayer of St. Ignatius, dwell on it for a while, and you will realise how great is the leap of faith Our Lord expects us to make.
Take, Lord, and
receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given
all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is
yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.
If everything that we have is God’s, and we are only the servant who takes what the Master gives him and then works to increase it (Mt 25:14-30), we have really nothing to fear. Easy to say, and as I myself confess, not so easy to put into practice. We can try though!
This urging to build our foundation on Christ makes more sense when we see who are the enemies that are ranged against us. As St. Cyril of Alexandria teaches:
We do not wrestle against blood and flesh, but against governments, empires, the world rulers of this present darkness, and wicked spirits in the heavenly regions. We also have a crowd of other enemies. They are the fleshly mind, the law that rages in our members, passions of many kinds, the lust of pleasure, the lust of the flesh, the lust of wealth, and others. We must wrestle with these. This is our savage troop of enemies. How will we conquer? “We will conquer believing that in God we shall do courageously”… “and he will bring to nothing those that oppress us.
None of these enemies we can hope to fight by ourselves. We need grace. The grace of a solid foundation, and the infusion of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. These, my dear brothers and sisters, we are provided weekly in the Eucharist, so that our foundation may be Christ.
May God bless you.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipatory Mass on 6 Sept 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Old Goa.)
(Image reference: The (Great)Tower of Babel (detail), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.)
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