Aug 24 Sun
Will only a few be saved?
Somebody asked Our Lord that simple question. He meant: How many people will receive the salvation you have come to bring us? Or, more simply, how many will go to heaven?
Christ answered with a parable and the corresponding explanation.
Salvation is pictured as the kingdom of God and as an estate or home. To get in, you must enter through a “narrow gate.” Inside, many are participating in a meal.
The Lord, the master of the house, had gone outside to lock the “narrow” gate of his home. Outside are people who were not “strong enough” to enter through the narrow gate previously. They are knocking and asking to be admitted. The master refuses them entry, saying he does not know them.
The central question for us Christians is, what will exclude us from the feast of the kingdom of God?
The answer is ‘evildoing.’ Those who are not admitted are “evildoers.” It does not matter if you are a Jew who heard Jesus preaching or a Christian who attends a religious service every week. Salvation comes from Christ, but if you are an evildoer, you don’t know Christ, and He doesn’t know you.
The “evildoers” of Christ’s parable are those who commit culpable and avoidable sins.
The trials which our loving Father sends us (the narrow gate) help us to become “strong enough.”
And the Gospel tells us what we must do to become the opposite of evildoers: strong doers of good.
Thus, we must struggle to achieve mastery of the soul over the body. This struggle is a training to become virtuous.
In this struggle, through self-denial, the soul—the rational intellect and the will—tries to exercise control over the body. It is like physical training. But there is also a mental training (interior mortification).
Our Lord said, “he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38).
It is the struggle of our soul over our animal nature. Our animal nature is not bad, since God created our bodies, too. But our desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain, our changing emotions, and our powerful passions pull us in the wrong direction.
As soon as we set out to do the will of God (to “enter by the narrow gate”), we subordinate our desires to right reason and the law of God. This is done both to avoid sin and to express love for God and neighbor.
If we do this, we begin to overcome vices and build virtues.
We cannot accomplish this without grace, which God gives us abundantly in the Sacraments. But unless we make the effort, this growth cannot occur. Thus, being “strong enough” to enter through the narrow gate of salvation means making the effort with the help of God’s grace.
The struggle we must undertake begins with the effort to avoid mortal sin and to obey the precepts of the Church.