Choosing to enter by the wide open door leads you to wide and clear pavements, with huge signposts leading to many places of pleasure and relaxation. There are exciting games and wide variety of food. Somehow it is never seems enough as there is always more to be gotten.
Choosing to enter by the narrow door on the other hand, through Christ is indeed one with many challenges. Our Lord never once said the journey through it would be easy. Imagine as you go through it there are brambles and thistles yet the narrow path leads you clear of their prickly reach. Then you find yourself going through a thick jungle in which you have to cut your way through. There is yet another winding rocky road ahead and you wonder how far more you have to go? While tired and weather beaten you have joy and peace in your heart. You know the Lord is with you every step of the way and you are in awe of your surroundings which the Lord our God had created. Eventually as if time suddenly stopped there is a clearing ahead, you walk through it and therein lies a hidden oasis, a garden paradise with breath taking beauty! You have arrived! All the pain and struggle seems too tiny a price to pay for this reality. You have entered into the bosom of the Lord our God and that is the only place you want to be.
Yes indeed the Lord is all merciful and loving. To all who love Him and follow His commandments. Even to those who have sinned greatly but has heard His call for repentance and turned to Him for help, His mercy and grace is upon them. However there is no plain easier way of stating this truth then to say Woe to you who take His love and mercy for granted! For thinking there is always time to have a change of heart. What if tomorrow never comes for you? For saying we want to enjoy life to the full for now! Woe to you for the life you are leading is not even close to what living life to the full is, For the fullness of life can only be found in Christ Jesus our Lord. And sooner than you know or think, you will find yourself outside the locked narrow door having missed the opportunity that was offered to You.
Holy Spirit Lord, I pray for my sanctification, wash me and purify me that I may be white as snow. Pray with me in my moments of difficulty and dryness. Most of all guide my every thought, word and deed so that all I say or do might be pleasing to God my Heavenly Father. Through Christ my Lord. Amen
First reading
Romans 8:26-30 ·
The Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words
The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.
We know that by turning everything to their good God co-operates with all those who love him, with all those that he has called according to his purpose. They are the ones he chose specially long ago and intended to become true images of his Son, so that his Son might be the eldest of many brothers. He called those he intended for this; those he called he justified, and with those he justified he shared his glory.
Gospel
Luke 13:22-30
The last shall be first and the first last
Through towns and villages Jesus went teaching, making his way to Jerusalem. Someone said to him, ‘Sir, will there be only a few saved?’ He said to them, ‘Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.
‘Once the master of the house has got up and locked the door, you may find yourself knocking on the door, saying, “Lord, open to us” but he will answer, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will find yourself saying, “We once ate and drank in your company; you taught in our streets” but he will reply, “I do not know where you come from. Away from me, all you wicked men!”
‘Then there will be weeping and grinding of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves turned outside. And men from east and west, from north and south, will come to take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.
‘Yes, there are those now last who will be first, and those now first who will be last.’
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