22.08.2004 21st Sunday Ordinary Season - Year C
First Reading: Isaiah 66, 18-21 Psalm 116
Second Reading: Hebrews 12,5-7,11-13 Gospel Reading: Luke 13,22-30
The letter to the Hebrews is about God's lessons which sometimes make us suffer.
When someone disciplines a brother, he himself suffers, for he realizes that
the lives of the people whom he loves are in danger. If you are a parent you
will know how much you suffer when you see your children acquire habits that
are bad for them or their health, or when they start seeing friends who ruin
their positive qualities or compromise their futures. Parents, often with heavy
hearts, have to discipline their children and make them suffer and then risk
being considered mean and old-fashioned. True love helps to overcome these difficulties.
God, too, has this love for us and considers us and treats us as His children.
The author of the letter to the Hebrews interprets our suffering as disciplining
by God. We need to be disciplined because we often chose paths which follow
the sweet and attractive seduction of evil, tricks which lead us to ruin. Our
egoism and pride are so firmly established that we no longer even recognize
them. We have even become used to defining and, therefore justifying as "love"
those sentiments which cause us to be unfaithful to our spouses making entire
families and communities suffer and to dishonour the Church. Some even call
love certain impulses that lead us to be unfaithful to our promises to God.
Every day of every year, because of our pride, we need some humiliation, some
strong blow which makes us lower our heads.
If we were obedient to our Father and true to the gospels, we wouldn't need
disciplining. If we were rich in love to God and men, we would be able to climb
the steepest path which leads to the narrow door of life. To set off on this
path we have to struggle in all senses. We must truly desire friendship with
Jesus who is the only one who can lead us to the Father, after having perfected
the life in us, and is the only one who can fill us with joy and true satisfaction.
Jesus tells the Jews too, of their need for God's lessons. Many of them thought
they were safe for eternity by the mere fact of being Jews. The Christian Jews
considered themselves doubly safe because of their being Jews and Christians.
And these days we too feel ourselves safe and act as if paradise were ours by
right only because we have been generous or because we go to mass regularly
or because we are friends of some religious personality or for some other such
reason.
Jesus warns us of our false sense of security. If we do not enter the narrow
door, he will not be able to receive us; there are no other doors to go through.
It will be of no help to say we have heard of his teachings or that we have
sat near him. Which is the narrow door? Where will we find it? Who will show
it to us?
A lady showed me a drawing once: a door in the shape of a cross. The door was
very narrow, one could only pass through it by stretching out ones arms as Jesus
crucified. The hands could carry no baggage, it wouldn't fit through. Can one
enter such a door? Should we try? Effort is necessary, the effort of leaving
everything behind, to take on the "form" of Jesus when he offered
his life to the Father, to raise ones arms as if in prayer or as if one wishes
to embrace the whole world. If we do not draw close to the "narrow door"
many others will pass us, all the others, the poor, the outcasts of society,
the sinners who still worship silent idols, but who will be able to hear with
joy the voice of the true God who speaks through Jesus! We will be happy that
they pass, but we will not be able to accept that we must stay out. Whoever
stays out will weep and "gnash their teeth" says the Lord, who really
does not want to say to us: "I don't know where you come from". Isaiah
predicts God drawing near to all nations, thanks to unexpected preachers. "They
will come and they will see my glory", says the prophet in order to evoke
a holy envy in those who are in Jerusalem, so that they too might listen to
and obey God. In today's age we could consider ourselves among those who are
in Jerusalem and who need reminding for we have settled into a comfortable life
without true conversion to the Lord.
When Jesus talks of the narrow door, he is on his way to Jerusalem: here he
will be crucified and will open the door of love for us, the sacrifice of ourselves
so that our lives may participate in the life of the God of love! Once through
that door we will reach the joy of profound communion with Him and with all
His saints, communion that will let us dance with joy in eternity: we will thank
our Father for all His disciplining!