You may have heard about a man who stopped at his parents’ grave site en route to his sister’s house. Now their mother never liked the headstone at her husband’s grave. So before she died, the mother gave her daughter $3,000 to buy “a classy stone.” But at the cemetery, the brother saw the same old marker. So at his sister’s house, he asked, “Didn’t mom ask you to buy a classy headstone?” His sister said, “Yes. I’m wearing it on my finger. Isn’t it a classy diamond?” So much for miscommunication!
The word of God takes us back over 3,000 years to a charismatic leader by the name of Joshua. In this passage Joshua calls the Hebrews together in their new land and challenges them to make a choice: either worship the God who has worked signs and wonders in your life, or serve the false indigenous gods of this land. Joshua then renews his fidelity to the covenant with God. And so too do the Hebrews.
The author may be inviting us to renew our own baptismal promises, to live a life worthy of our calling as sons and daughters of God our Father.
Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Ephesus, in Turkey, speaks about the relationship between husband and wife. While alluding to the Greco-Roman household codes of his day, Paul transcends these and compares marriage to the self-giving love of Jesus Christ for the Church, his community of disciples. Jesus is a model of love for us.
In the Gospel according to John, Jesus challenges the disciples to make a choice: believe in him as God’s holy One: And so what do the disciples do? Some walked away. But others stayed; they asked Jesus, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
Eternal life is ultimately a gift from God, not something we earn. But Jesus says that we have to struggle to enter through the narrow gate into the kingdom of God.
Many people today struggle through so-called narrow gates as they go through the cycle of human development, from adolescence through young adulthood and into old age.
I think of the movie Brooklyn, a charming story about a young girl growing up in a small Irish village in the 1950s. There weren’t many opportunities for her there.
With the encouragement of her sister, this girl, Eilis, decides to open the door to a new life in Brooklyn. She doesn’t have a promising start: she’s seasick on the ocean voyage; and feels lost in the “hustle and bustle” of New York City. But a few people along the way help her: a priest, the landlady, the department store supervisor. She gradually sees a new life opening up.
But when her sister unexpectedly dies, Eilis goes back to Ireland; her mother is now alone. She enters that door she closed and confronts her guilt for leaving her sister to care for her mother. Then, on her way back to America, Eilis befriends another young woman like herself. Eilis notes, “You’ll feel so homesick that you’ll want to die, but you will endure it and it won’t kill you. And one day the sun will come out. And you’ll realize … this is where your life is.”
Many times, we can only go through the narrow gates or doors of life by letting go of our fears and doubts, by realizing that God is with us. Our faith can sustain us because it helps us overcome fears and doubts. How is that?
Our faith fosters a healthy self-image. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and through baptism, God lives within us, and we live within God. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. And people with a positive, healthy self-image generally engage in constructive behaviors.
Second, our faith satisfies our longing for happiness. We are forever seeking the transcendent, someone or something beyond ourselves that will give purpose to our lives. St. Augustine wrote, “O God, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Within every human being there is a subconscious quest for the ultimate, the all-good. Our primary purpose in life is to be in relationship with God and one another forever and in that relationship our yearnings for happiness are completely satisfied.
Third, our faith gives us a sense of belonging. We are a community of believers who go back two thousand years, with heroes and heroines who inspire us, saints who encourage us in our pursuit of God and God’s pursuit of us. We are linked together by a common bond of faith in Jesus Christ.
We gather weekly to thank God for our lives, to acknowledge our absolute dependency upon God as our Creator and to ask God in the Our Father prayer to satisfy our basic needs for food, health, home, a respectable livelihood, and a good, peaceful society. These encounters with the triune God are wrapped up in the mystery of the sacraments.
But we are a community not only of heroes but also of sinners.
According to a PA Grand Jury Report, over a 70 year period, about 2% of clergy committed despicable crimes of abuse, and bishops covered them up. 2/3 of those accused are dead; but allegations against them were deemed credible.
For the past sixteen years, there are policies and protocols in place to safeguard children and vulnerable adults, and these protocols require review and regular improvement.
These incidents are but one reminder that the community of disciples is also made up of sinners. We must continually ask for God's forgiveness and rebuild this community of living stones.
Jesus assures us all that God’s mercy outweighs our sins. God in particular gives us the sacraments of healing, service, and grace to help us through the narrow gates of our lives. And God also gives us each other to support and protect each other.
Finally, God provides us with a guide, the Bible, with the best news ever: how God offers each one of us salvation through Jesus. The Bible demonstrates God’s unconditional love and forgiveness and acceptance of us. The risen Christ is present in the Word of God proclaimed in our liturgies. God speaks to us, and we listen; we speak to God, and God listens.
As we go through narrow gates of life, with fears and weakness at times, embracing our faith in Jesus Christ will sustain us so that we can eventually enter safely through that final gate into the kingdom of God.
