The 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 21, 2022

Luke 13:22–30

Jesus passed through towns and villages, teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” He answered them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough. After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ He will say to you in reply, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ And you will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’ Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!’ And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves cast out. And people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

“Jesus passed through towns and villages, teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem.”  St. Luke tells us the names of only a few of these fortunate towns and villages.  Since we can follow the route the Lord must have taken through Galilee to Jerusalem, we can make some surmises, but we do not know how long he spent in any of these places, nor of what he said in them.  Just a few sentences spoken in one of these unnamed towns, a single description of a miracle, would be so precious to us.  This lack makes what the Evangelists preserve for us all the more worth embracing and pondering. 

“Lord, will only a few people be saved?”  St. Luke preserves this for us, and how good that he did so, for it is a question we all want to know the answer to.  Now, what is it that the questioner really wants to know?  Why does he ask?  The questioner is asking about his chances, or about those of family members.  He realizes that he is not living a particularly virtuous life, but he is not ready to admit that he is living a bad life either.  And likewise, concerning family members.  It is not a theoretical question.  It is a nervous question.  Will only a few be “saved”?  This man is not asking about entering the Kingdom so much as being saved from fiery Gehenna.

“Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.”  The Lord speaks of a “gate” through which a person must strive or “contend” to enter.  This brings to mind the Lord’s admonition that it is easier for a camel (or a rope) to pass through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy person to enter the Kingdom of God.  Also, “Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leads to life: and few there are who find it!” (Matthew 7, 13-24).  This gate is “narrow” because our sinful habits have made it narrow.  Each time we sin, each time we succumb to the will of the devil, the gate narrows for us.  It may narrow to the point where not only can we not go through it, but we can no longer see it.  Each time we win or, conversely, each time we perform a virtuous act, we change.  The change is abiding; it does not have a fleeting effect.  Even after we have confessed the sin and received absolution, our character does not change.  Changing our character — becoming a virtuous person — takes time and hard work.  This is the “striving” or contending.  As St. Paul says, “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places” (Ephesians 6, 12).  That is, we not not fight exterior foes so much as interior ones: our hardened character and the demons who want to protect what they regard as their property.  How do we contend successfully against them?  Through regular reception of the Sacraments, devoted prayer, and mortification, such as fasting — and not only from food.  The Lord tells us the struggle will be a hard one, but it is for us the only struggle that matters.  Even so, many will fail.

“After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ ”  The door is “locked” at the end of our lives on earth and at the end of time.  We do not want to be left outside where “there will be wailing and grinding of teeth”, and so we hasten inside the first time the Master calls, and he is calling now, for each of us to come inside.  “We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.”  Those shut out of the house — who die without repentance — will shout in their panic that they must be allowed in because he came among them, but proximity — the Lord’s taking on human flesh — does not guarantee salvation for those who ignored or rejected him.  “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!”  That is, I know you are not members of my family.  Depart?  Depart to where?  The Lord asked Peter and the Apostles if they were also going to leave him after he had taught the crowd about the Bread of Life.  Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6, 69).  Away from the Lord there is only darkness and suffering, brought on by oneself.

“And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves cast out.”  This is a related teaching, joined to the previous teaching by the Lord’s explaining that it is not enough for people to have been alive at his coming as man for them to be saved.  Here, he says that it is not enough to be a Jew to be saved.  “And people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.”  The Lord here speaks of the Gentiles who will come to believe and who will take the place of those Jews who would not believe.  This saying would have inflamed the Pharisees and many other Jews too, for they saw the Gentiles as “dogs”.  The inference that the Gentiles and the Prophets would eat together in the Kingdom would have been seen as deliberately provocative, for while the Jews allowed themselves to have certain business with the Gentiles, they most certainly could not eat with them.  In this verse, we see how the Lord fulfills Isaiah: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb: and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the lion, and the sheep shall abide together, and a little Child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11, 6). 

“For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”  The order in heaven will not divide the Jews and the Gentiles, with the Jews in all the first places, but they shall be ordered according to their love for God.  For us also, the Lord shows that it is possible for us to convert from our past lives, however hardened in sin they may be, to repent, to do penance, to practice virtue, and to be saved and numbered among the just.