'Enter through the narrow door'

By Fr. Vincent Hawkswell

21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
1st Reading: Is. 66:18-21
2nd Reading: Heb. 12:5-7, 11-13
Gospel: Lk. 13:22-30

"Lord, will only a few be saved?" someone asks Jesus in this Sunday's Gospel Reading. "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able," Jesus replies. "Then you will begin to say, `We ate and drank with You, and You taught in our streets.' But the Lord will say, `I do not know where you come from.'"

What frightening words! How different from those other words of Christ: "Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest."

How can the same loving Person have said them both?

People sometimes say to me something like the following: "I don't go to church, Father, but I love my wife and I look after my family and I don't steal or murder or commit adultery. God loves me and understands where I'm coming from."

Others will say, for example, "I accept most of what the Church says, Father, and I consider myself a Catholic, but I just can't accept the Church's teaching on contraception."

It's very easy for us to think of the Christian life as a matter of simply obeying laws: the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the Church. We think of it like an examination we have to pass. Everybody knows that 50 per cent is good enough.

God wants our selves

However, in this case the examiner is God. Maybe 50 per cent isn't good enough. Maybe He wants 90 per cent before He'll let us into heaven.

Okay; I can live with that. I don't find it too hard to obey nine out of 10 commandments. Surely that'll be good enough?

We are rather like people paying income tax. We pay it honestly, but we don't like doing it, and we hope very earnestly that when we have paid it we will have enough of our own left to live on.

We think that if we give so much of our time, so much of our money, and so much of our talents to God, He'll leave us alone to enjoy life in our own way for at least part of the time.

However, St. Thomas More warned that if we try to make a contract with God about how much we have to serve Him before He will let us into heaven, the only signature on the contract will be ours.

That is not what God wants. He doesn't want so much of our time, so much of our money, etc. He wants us; He wants ourselves.

No compromise

St. Paul warned again and again that it is not obeying the law that will justify us, but faith or trust in Jesus Christ.

Trying to get into heaven by obeying a certain percentage of God's laws a certain percentage of the time is difficult. In fact, it's impossible. "Many will seek to enter" in this way "and will not be able."

If we demand that God leave us alone to enjoy ourselves in our own way a certain percentage of the time, then eventually, He will, and we will find that it is hell.

The only way for us to be truly happy, in this world or in the next, is to hand ourselves over to Christ, body and soul. Only then will we find it possible to enter the kingdom of heaven. In fact, it will be easy. "For My yoke is easy and My burden light."

Handing ourselves over to Christ means resolving to obey all His laws, not just those we happen to feel like obeying or those we happen to agree with. It means submitting to His discipline, as the Second Reading puts it.

"My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by Him, for the Lord disciplines those whom He loves, and chastises every child whom He accepts," the Reading says. To demand that God leave us alone even part of the time is to ask not for more love, but for less.

Christ's discipline leads us to heaven through the narrow door. In fact, since we eat His Body and drink His Blood, Christ enters into us and comes with us on our journey.

Of course, in practice, handing ourselves over to Christ is not something we do once and for all and then everything is easy. We have to relinquish our own will again and again every day as we strive to take His way, which leads to the narrow door, instead of following our own way, which leads to hell.

God has promised to be infinitely merciful to our mistakes: "Though your sins be as red as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow."

However, He has not promised to tolerate a compromise. We cannot keep in our lives a settled, regularized, accepted habit of sin and expect God to overlook it because we obey His other laws. If we try, we will hear those awful words, "I tell you, I do not know where you come from; go away from Me, all you evildoers!"

We will not be able to fool God, for He knows our works and our thoughts, as the First Reading says. We will not be able to escape Him, for He will "gather all nations and tongues."

When Christ spoke the words reported in this Sunday's Gospel, He was trying put "the fear of God" into us, but He was doing it out of love.