Sunday 21 C (2022)

That second reading, from the letter to the Hebrews,

leaves me uncomfortable.

It seems to be based on the idea that the loving education of children

has physical punishment as a normal component.

That may have seemed obvious to the author of Hebrews;

– his translators certainly think it was.

Nonetheless, we should have the confidence to say

that the violent treatment of children is not Christian,

and is a poor analogy for how God treats us.

This does not neutralize the key point of the reading;

for God is a loving parent who, through Jesus, the Word of God,

does indeed train us,

encouraging perseverance and endurance

in the face of faith-testing difficulties and disappointments.

Turning to the gospel, it raises the question:

will there be only a few saved?

For much of the last 1500 years,

Christianity in the West has offered a rather bleak answer.

More recently, there has been a renewal of hope in

the mercy and generosity of God –

some respected contemporary Catholic teachers,

confident in the power of the Cross, in the universality of grace,

speculate, hope and pray,

that it is rare to be completely cut off from God.

Yes, a definitive, absolute, rejection of all that is love is possible,

but, maybe, most do not resist grace so comprehensively.

Today’s gospel seems to be a compilation of sayings related to:

will there be only a few saved?: a question Jesus was surely asked, in one form or another, many times.

The sayings do not give a direct answer to the question:

rather, they ask for a wholehearted commitment to Jesus.

We heard: Try your best to enter by the narrow door.

‘Try your best’ is ‘strive’, ‘struggle’, ‘give it all you’ve got’.

In Luke especially, Jesus journeys resolutely to Jerusalem,

to the passion, to the cross: this is the narrow door.

We are to ‘try our best’, strive, struggle,

to accept in the depths of our being Jesus’ embrace from the cross,

and to join him in loving self-sacrifice:

contemplating God’s love shown in Jesus moves us to love.

The narrow door of the cross opens the way to resurrection,

to new life in the power of the Holy Spirit.

By striving for the narrow door of the cross,

it is the privilege of the Christian

to become a living part of Jesus’ saving work,

to become a living part of God’s generosity and mercy,

and to proclaim that generosity and mercy with great confidence.

Our first reading was the vision from the end of the book of Isaiah,

a vision full of hope,

describing a wonderful awakening of all nations to the glory of God

and their gathering for worship.

By offering this context,

the church is pointing us to the final part of today’s gospel…

People from east and west, from north and south,

will come to take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.

Every Sunday, across the world, the Eucharist is celebrated,

gathering, into one, people from east and west, north and south:

the foretaste of the feast in the kingdom of God,

and an effective sign of the generosity and mercy of God

shown in Jesus’ saving death.

In our Mass today, and every Sunday,

we give thanks for the breadth and the depth of Jesus’ saving work;

and invite him to take possession of hearts.