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By Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, OnePeterFive, July 23, 2022 

 Convert from Lutheranism, ordained to the priesthood in 1991 by St. John Paul II in Rome for the Suburbicarian Diocese of Velletri-Segni. Classics at University of Minnesota. Licence and Doctoral studies in Patristic Theology at the Augustinianum in Rome.

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

With this 7th Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo Holy Church began a series of contrasts. She shows us the difference between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, between the divine and the mundane.

Context is called for. The Gospel passage in Matthew 7 is at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. It is in a series of rapid lessons, often having phrases that are part of common parlance now. The parallel passage is in Luke 6: 20-49, the much short Sermon on the Plain (on a “level place,” Greek epì tópou pedinoû). It makes sense that, were there a level place on the big hill that is supposed to be the location of the Sermon on the Mount, then the Lord, standing below with the crowds remaining above, could have been heard more easily by a larger group, as if in a natural amphitheater. Both accounts in Luke and Matthew contain strong admonitions about what happens to people who are not right with God. …