I read a story about a man who visited his parents’ grave. His sister had received $4,000 to buy “a classy gravestone.” But he saw the same old marker.
He asked his sister, “Didn’t mom ask you to buy a classy gravestone?” His sister said, “Yes. I’m wearing it on my finger. It is a classy stone, a diamond?” That a classic example of a stone mix-up!
The word of God takes us back over 3,000 years. A charismatic leader named Joshua calls the Hebrews together and challenges them to make a choice: either worship the God who has worked signs and wonders or serve the false gods of this land. Joshua renews his own promise of fidelity to the covenant with God, and so do the Hebrews.
The author may be inviting us to renew our promises to God, especially our baptismal promises, to live a life worthy of our calling as adopted sons and daughters of God. And renew our faithfulness to our responsibilities in life.
Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Ephesus, in Turkey, speaks about the relationship between husband and wife. While alluding to Greco-Roman codes of his day, Paul transcends these and compares marriage to the self-giving love of Jesus Christ for his community of disciples. Jesus is the model of love for us.
In the Gospel, Jesus challenges the disciples to make a choice: believe in him as God’s holy One. 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 we have to struggle to enter through the narrow gate into the kingdom of God. Many people today struggle through the gates of adolescence, young adulthood, the middle years and old age as they navigate through these so-called narrow gates of life.
I think of the movie Brooklyn, about a girl growing up in a small Irish village in the 1950s. There weren’t many opportunities for her there. This young woman, Eilis, decides to open a new door: in the U.S. She’s seasick on the voyage and feels lost in the hustle and bustle of New York City. Yet, as a few people help, she gradually sees a new life opening.
When her sister dies, Eilis goes back to Ireland. She confronts her guilt for leaving her sister to care for her mother. Then, returning to America, Eilis befriends another young woman starting out. 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 get through the so-called narrow gates of life by letting go of fears and doubts. Realizing that God is with us, our faith can sustain us in these moments of fear and doubt. How is that?
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. And people with a positive, healthy self-image generally engage in constructive behaviors.
Faith satisfies our longing for happiness. We are forever seeking the transcendent, something beyond ourselves giving purpose to our lives. St. Augustine, whose feast day is August 28, 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 is to be in a relationship with God and one another forever. In that relationship our yearnings for happiness are completely satisfied.
Faith gives a sense of belonging to a community of believers going back centuries, with heroes and heroines who inspire us, saints who encourage our pursuit of God and God’s pursuit of us. I think of Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven.
Linked 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 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 also are a community not only of heroes but also of sinners. Some are downright dysfunctional, an embarrassment to the entire community. Yet we must strive to do what is right and true and good, despite so called “falls” or lapses of one kind or another. We must continually ask for God's forgiveness and rebuild this community of living stones. Every day brings a fresh start.
Jesus assures us that God’s mercy outweighs our sins. God gives us sacraments of healing, service, and grace to help us through these so-called gates of our lives. And God also gives us each other for support and protection.
Finally, God provides a guide, the Bible, with the best news ever: how God offers each one of us salvation through Jesus by the power of the Spirit. The Bible demonstrates God’s unconditional love and forgiveness and acceptance of us. The risen Christ is present in the Word, proclaimed in our liturgies. God speaks to us, and we listen; we speak to God, and God listens.
As we go through the occasional storms and challenges of life, we pray that God will increase our faith in Jesus Christ. That faith will sustain us so we can eventually enter safely through that final gate into the kingdom of God. Amen!
