“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my Father in Heaven shall enter the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and work many miracles in thy name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity’” (Mt. 7:21-23).
When I was first converting from a life of sin I tried to do many good things to try to earn God’s favor and forgiveness. At the time I did not “know” the Lord nor understand that without Him I could do nothing (cf. John 15:5).
The Church is the Bride of Christ, she is One Body with Him through Baptism and the Eucharist, and she has the authority to act in His Name. As individual members of the Body we are called to do good works in His Name. Married couples can either have a truthful relationship in which they make a total self- gift to one another, or they can have a contracepted relationship which appears truthful, but actually prevents the husband and wife from “knowing” one another and becoming fruitful. Similarly we can act in Christ’s Name without “knowing” Him as the Bride knows the Bridegroom. This is done when we do external good works for our own self –glory, but we remain sterile because we don’t fully trust God or surrender ourselves to Him. We try to determine for ourselves what is good instead of following the Lord’s lead.
As an example consider Ananias, the believer in Damascus whom the Lord called to go and baptize Saul of Tarsus (cf. Acts 9:10-18). Intellectually this did not make sense to Ananias and he tried to reason with the Lord. But when the Lord still insisted that he go, Ananias obeyed and baptized the great Apostle Paul whose life continues to bear fruit down through the centuries. If Ananias had not “known” the Lord and was not “known” by Him, he may have said something like, “Lord, I don’t think it’s a good idea to baptize Saul, but I’ll go down to the marketplace and find five other people to baptize for You.”
We have to pray for the grace to trust the Eternal Father and to live in union with His Son Jesus Who always does the Will of the Father (cf. John 6:38). This requires the surrender of our plans and ideas of how we think the world should be saved.
