21st Sunday of Ordinary Time—C2004
Luke 13:22-30
Deacon Lee Hunt (St. Monica)

Strive to Enter the Narrow Gate to Eternal Life

Very many opportunities are available to us during our lives. From this large assortment, we must decide which ones we want, which ones suit our personalities, and then strive to get them. The ones that we choose are not just going to fall into our laps—we have to go get them. If we pursue them half-heartedly, we are apt to miss them. One could say that the gate that we have to go through to attain what we want is a narrow one since there are much larger and easier gates that we could just fall through without even trying. These larger gates can distract us from the narrow gate we would like to go through.

Let me give you some examples of common choices we must make.
• While in school and college, we must decide what kind of vocation we would like to enter after we graduate. To prepare ourselves, we must strive to get good grades if we want to succeed in that vocation. The gate we are preparing to go through is a narrow one.
• When we find a job we like, it is important to strive to do it well so as to maintain our employment. To do the job half-heatedly means that we may soon be looking for another one. The gate to keeping a good job is also a narrow one.
• During our recreational time, some of us participate in competitive sports. We soon find out that if we want to win, we must strive diligently to pass through a narrow gate of being a winner. If our goal is to participate just for the fun of it, the alternative gate is much wider.

I’ve played tournament tennis most of my life. Striving to make it through the narrow gate to the finals is most difficult for me here in Oklahoma where summer temperatures are in the 90s to 100s. Often when struggling in the semifinals, I will think that if I lose this round, I won’t have to come back tomorrow. However, I always strive to win and the gate to getting to the finals is never a wide one.

The difficulty of striving to get what we want goes beyond the secular part of our lives and also applies to the spiritual part. In today’s gospel, Jesus tells his questioners that to be saved requires that they “strive to enter through the narrow gate.”
Jesus has freely offered salvation to everyone. But, will we choose salvation from the many opportunities available? Or will we slide through one of the larger gates in life that is much easier and perhaps more fun to do in the short term? We must strive to accept Jesus’ offer of eternal salvation.

Salvation is a pure gift offered to us by Jesus. There is nothing we do can earn this gift, it is free from God. But a gift is not a gift until it is accepted. As human beings, we have free will and can choose either to accept his gift or to reject it. We can wait too long to accept the gift, or we can become so calloused with the other pleasures of earth that we no longer realize that the gift is being offered.

A friend of mine may be slipping through a wide gate while losing sight of the narrow gate. A few years ago, he enthusiastically joined the Church. But slowly he began to drift away as his quantity of money allowed him to participate in whatever he wants. Presently, he thinks that he is in control of his life and that he no longer needs God or his Christian community. He seems to be losing his desire to strive for the narrow gate of salvation. Jesus tells us that timing is very important when striving for the narrow gate. He says that when people knock on the door after it is closed, he will say, “I do not know where you are from.”

Since God is in charge of final judgment, why do we try to decide who will be saved? We, as disciples of Jesus, must not be judgmental about who we think will go through the narrow gate; our vision of God must be not myopic or parochial. We must see with a wide-angle lens that God’s salvation is open to all. God’s salvation is unbounded and it reaches out to those we distrust and sometimes even despise.

We must be careful not to think that only those with our point of view are faithful and deserving of salvation. We must not think that only those will be saved who belong to the right religious groups, who believe correct religious doctrines, or who follow an approved way of life.

There is something dangerous about being smugly convinced of our own salvation because we have followed the rules. When we are so sure of ourselves, we can easily fall into the error of being as sure of the moral failures of others as well.

Jesus’ invitation to salvation is open to all of us. It is his will to save us. The good news is that it is never too late. What is our response? Is each of us striving to go through the narrow gate?