A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus Jesus went through the towns teaching. Notice he didn't write a book or send us a lot of messages through his ear rocks. Jesus went through the cities and towns teaching, all the while making his way toward Jerusalem. Someone from the crowd asked Jesus, Lord, are they few in number who are saved?
Jesus replied, try to come in through the narrow door. Many, I tell you, will try to enter and be unable to enter. When once the master of the house has risen to lock the door and you stand outside knocking and saying, Lord, open for us, he will say in reply, I do not know where you come from. Then you will begin to say, why we ate and drank in your company. You taught us in your streets.
But the lord will answer, I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Away from me, you evildoers. There will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets safe in the kingdom of god, and you yourselves reject it. People will come from the East and the West, from the North, from the South, and will take their place at the feast in the kingdom of god. Some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.
This is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. As you recognize, this is just another statement of our blessed lord that you do not hear frequently quoted, often referred to. It is treated with a great deal of silence. Just as we're treating silently our blessed Lord's little statement that unless we take up our cross daily and follow him, we can't be his disciples.
Remember, that is the only standard he ever made for following him. You take this notice, this isn't a parable. Our lord is speaking to these these people, and he's looking at their hearts. And I'm not trying to explain it. There's a lot of mysterious stuff here, that here are people coming knocking on the door and wanting to come into the kingdom of god, and he won't let them in.
How do you explain that? I don't know. But I think of Calvin right away and his his ideas of predestination. It's mysterious. But there's one there's whatever the overall picture may be, and we all remember, we don't have the whole picture here.
All we have is just a a few comments of our blessed lord in a very concrete situation. And, obviously, he's accusing these people of being insincere. Obviously, he's saying that. Furthermore, he's saying that the last will be first and those who are who are trying and are first, that they'll be last. Without trying to put all of this together, I I see clearly one thing here, that Jesus Christ is telling us it's not easy to get into the kingdom of God and stay there.
He doesn't say it's impossible, he says it's a narrow gate. We don't like this kind of thing. No one does. It's walking a tightrope, it's walking a plank, it's walking across the chasm on a a on a rail. It's riding your bicycle in the cracks.
You know, you can ride your bicycle perfectly straight till someone says, keep it on that crack, and then you're going all over the pavement. But you see, if you take the gospels, the the the four gospels of our blessed lord, the good news, you can't escape some of these things which we are so soft peddling today. We are trying so much to be Christian Marxist, to trade to to convert this world into a comfortable mode of living. One minute we we are all praised, we we say use words about poverty and being poor in Christ and putting God first. And at the same time, what we're most eager about is keeping a good fat bank account, keeping a good house over our heads, getting a good education for ourselves and for our children and all of these things.
Not that these things are wrong, but the thing is where are where are our priorities? How do we put all of this together? And if you're going to be a Christian, this is exactly what you've gotta do. If any of you remember the days of the inner tube, remember the inner tube has to be without a hole in it. You may have a perfectly wonderful inner tube except for one little pinprick.
And if that if that's the kind of an inner tube you have, you know what to do with it. You've got to repair it or throw it. You see, we have we are trying today, and this ties in, you know, with this liberation theology, now we're talking about liberation philosophy. We're trying so much to think of self fulfillment. I just received a letter about trying to get the priest of this archdiocese to where they're forming some kind of an association or movement.
I don't precisely know what it is. But it's it's an attempt to increase the spiritual life. And not in that whole document, the word God doesn't occur once. Everything is about me. To know my strengths, to know my weaknesses, to know where I can improve myself.
The word god doesn't occur once. You see, we're just tagging along with with so much secularism that's around us. And our blessed lord said, my kingdom is not of this world. Did he say that? He surely did.
My kingdom is not of this world. I have come to bring the sword. I have come to be a principle of division. As I have said many times, you won't find this on your Christmas cards. But did Christ say that?
He certainly did. And he amplified it with that tremendously startling statement that he has come to set fathers against sons, sons against fathers, daughters against their mothers, mothers against daughters. He amplified this. And yet at the same time, we're trying to make our compromises with this thing that Newman calls the world, which Saint Paul calls the world. We have a pretty good concept of what they're talking about, and we can't do it.
You cannot do it. You can try, but you won't succeed. You'll be straddling offense, and anyone who's tried that will know it's not comfortable position to be in. And so this is not this is not a doctrine of fear. This is not a doctrine to frighten people.
This is not something as we say to scare the hell out of them. Not at all. This is a doctrine of our our bless I'm only quoting our blessed Lord. It's what he said. What do you make of it?
But don't take it isolated. You've got to take that message of the good news altogether. You've got to put it all together, not only in theory, not only in a logical consistency, but in our daily living. And nobody in God's earth ever said this is easy. Christ said it was carrying a cross.
But he said, if you take up my cross and follow me, you will find that burden light and sweet. Did Jesus say that? He did. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.