Posted by The WORD in other words (2013) by Fr Magdaleno Fabiosa SVD – Villa Cristo Rey, Christ the King Seminary, Quezon City
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – C
Some religious sects today continue to naively believe that they alone will be saved. In the recent past, we Catholics also believed that we will be the only ones saved. Jesus was asked the same question. As he did in other occasions, Jesus did not face the question head on. He went beyond the immediate question because he is after a deeper and a more important concern. Thus to answer the question, Jesus pointed that an individual has to make a decision renewed on a day to day basis.
It is not enough to boasts of and be satisfied with our being Christians. It will not help us. Listen to what Jesus related about those who came late after the door of the house was shut. The owner of the house asked who they were. They answered: “we ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.” The owner of the house told them to go away because he did not know them. No one can take salvation for granted.
Then Jesus started talking about the need to enter into the narrow gate. If there is a narrow gate, then there must be a wide gate. What does this mean? Entering the wide gate means living according to the standards of the world: accepting and doing what everybody in the world does, believing that everything that the world could offer is good, and to follow and live by the principle of doing what feels good. One does not need to have a religious mind to realize that living in this way leads nowhere but to a dead-end of boredom, frustration, and unhappiness.
Jesus asks us to enter the narrow gate. What does this mean? This means not to be carried along by the world that is saturated with materialism, consumerism, hedonism and vanity that bring nothing but fleeting joys and empty promises. These things hit us like a current of a swift-flowing river. To enter the narrow gate is like swimming upstream against the current of materialism that blinds us from the reality of the spiritual dimensions of our human life; against consumerism that make us acquire things that we do not even need; against hedonism that saps our human potentials to soar into a relationship with the divine; and against vanity that is concern for the body that borders on adoration.
Entering the narrow gate means renewing daily the consequences of our being Christians –to go against the current. It is not enough to have been baptized once in our life. What is needed is to live up daily according to the consequences of our baptism. It is like the reality of being married. It is not enough that a couple has gone through the marriage rite and have signed the marriage contract. The proof of marriage happens on a day to day fidelity to the consequences of the “yes” the couple made during the day they were married. We know too well that good intentions are not enough. They have to be lived on a day to day basis for them to become realities in our lives. Otherwise, they remain “good but only intentions”; never real.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus, knowing too well our human condition, is warning us to enter the narrow door because he wants what is good for us. He is not like the master of the house in today’s Gospel who closed the door. Jesus never closes the door to us. We are the ones who close ourselves off from his love.
Let us heed what that voice of the Father heard at Jesus’ baptism: “Listen to him!” Let us also follow what Mary said to the servants at the wedding feast in Cana when she told them: “Do whatever he tells you.” And this is what Jesus tells us today: “Enter the narrow door.”
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