MANY FROM EAST AND WEST

October 27,  Wednesday

Thirtieth Week In Ordinary Time

      Our destiny in life is to be images of Christ, people who resemble him more and more. If we are open to the Spirit, he will help us to become more and more like Christ and he will pray in us.

      For disciples of Christ, it is not enough to know about the Lord or to come to Mass to eat with the Lord or to read the Bible. As Jesus tells us in many ways throughout the gospel, we must live as his disciples and put his word into practice. Otherwise it is as if we did not know him and he does not know us.

 

First Reading: Romans 8:26-30

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

 

Gospel: Luke 13:22-30

He went on teaching from town to village, village to town, but keeping on a steady course toward Jerusalem.

A bystander said, “Master, will only a few be saved?”

He said, “Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s salvation banquet just because you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood all your lives. Well, one day you’re going to be banging on the door, wanting to get in, but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying, ‘Sorry, you’re not on my guest list.’

“You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known you all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with his abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about me.’

“That’s when you’ll find yourselves out in the cold, strangers to grace. You’ll watch Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets march into God’s kingdom. You’ll watch outsiders stream in from east, west, north, and south and sit down at the table of God’s kingdom. And all the time you’ll be outside looking in—and wondering what happened. This is the Great Reversal: the last in line put at the head of the line, and the so-called first ending up last.”

 

Prayer

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

We know that there are poor people
and that there are people suffering
from injustice and the hard-heartedness of others.
Do not allow us to remain indifferent to their plight
but give us the courage to share with the needy
and to be the voice of the voiceless.
Make our faith deep and committed,
that you may recognize us
as real brothers and sisters,
of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:

Walkthrough the narrow door to life

Luke continued to use the image of journey to Jerusalem for his reflection on the spiritual journey of the disciple of Jesus. Here he presents a question and brings out a deeper teaching from Jesus. “Are there only a few who are saved?” It reflected the widespread notion of predestination of those who will ultimately be saved… And the religious leadership regarded themselves to be among the chosen ones.

But Jesus uses the opportunity to present a deeper reflection on the life of the disciple. He calls on his disciples not follow the crowd nor to succumb to the popular ideologies. The path to follow is the path trod by Jesus himself, but unfortunately it remains quite unpopular and not many are willing to walk this way. Hence, the Lord says, It is a narrow door, which many will not be able to enter.

In his advice to the disciples sent on mission, he told them to travel light, to trust in God, to possess only the minimum (Luke 10:1-12). The same approach should be carried on, to our way of living at all times. Discipleship is matter of letting go than of accumulating, of surrendering than of controlling, of learning to accept one’s powerlessness and helplessness before God than of trying to look good and to be in a position of strength to bargain.

What mattered for Jesus was that disciples truly listen to him, shape their lives according to his values and learn to love. Salvation was certainly not a factor of ethnic or religious identity. Luke wanted to tell his community, that calling themselves Christians was no guarantee for their obtaining God’s salvation. It required that they truly walk the path shown by Christ – the path of the Gospel – the narrow door. Anything else served only to inflate the self-image and make entry through the narrow doorway impossible.

“Weeping and gnashing of teeth” was not a description of the life after death, rather it was a poetic expression to stress the importance and urgency of the issues at stake. Choose life when you still have the chance to choose it. Because there will be a time, when you have no more chances left.

“Some who are last who will be first, and there are some who are first who will be last.” The message may have been particularly reassuring for Luke’s community of Gentile converts. They were among those coming from east and west, from north and south. They were the latecomers. The message is true for us too. It is never late to turn to God and to his saving grace.

 

Video available On Youtube: Walkthrough the narrow door to life