Wednesday of 30th week even numbered year “Jesus said to them ’Try to enter through the narrow gate, because I tell you, many will try to enter but will not succeed.”
’Jesus went teaching through towns and villages making his way to Jerusalem. The narrow gate is a gate of mercy for those who arrive late and who are taken aback by the closure of the gates, they hadn’t thought about this possibility.
Those who were listening to Jesus understood He was urging them : ’Try your hardest to enter by the narrow gate I am offering you, the one of faith, otherwise there will be others who will o in before you, believers come from th rising and the setting of the sun, from the North and south, who will be tehre more than you are, sons of Abraham, of the ace of the prophets.
Jesus is walking towards Jerusalem, many leave him, the more He draws closer to Jerusalem, the more he is alone.
At the Cross it will be as if he everything has failed, as if there is complte failure, there will just be Mary, John and some woman there with Him.
It is from here, this new departure, that God’s glory will be revealed. The apostle John won’t hesitate in saying that this complete failure is the revelation of God’s Glory.
Jesus prepares his people for this event that I so painful by the scandal of the collapsed tower, and before the religious who were assassinated whilst offering up a sacrifice.
As soon as the master of the house will have shut the big door you shall begin knocking on it ’Lord, open up to us!’
“Then you will start to say :’ We once ate and drank in your company; you taught in our streets’, but he will reply ’I do not know where you come from; away from me, all evil doers!”
Jesus’ words suggest a new reflection to us, one that has been constant : The door isn’t wide, and you need to show up on time, it is very urgent to commit yourself as quickly as possible:’ The gate is certainly very narrow, but you can go through it with a minimum of effort, for one day the gate will be shut fast.
Here we join numerous declarations and parables Jesus did about the unforeseeable end, the end of Jesus’ presence one earth, the end of the world, or the death of each person.
Jesus asks us for a conversion and to contemplate the gratuitous love of God given to us to put us back on our feet.
But before this is brought about in a whole new Love there comes contestation. It is in fact hard for us to let ourselves be loved by God gratuitously, to enter into his crazy Love as a grace offered to us. We need to have had the experience of the radical poverty in which we are in : the powerlessness we have to save ourselves.
The woman bent double in the Gospel and who is up standing again is the image of humanity standing up once more thanks to Jesus.
"And people from east to west, from north to south will come and sit down at the feast of the Kingdom of God.
The day will come when the history of the world will come to an end and every human being will turn over the final page of his life. Jesus does not forget, and he doesn’t want us to forget either. He is gentle and merciful, but his Love is strong and he brings us back all the time to how serious our life is.
Jesus the Saviour knows very well that we shall never be happy as long as we never go right to the end of our answer.
Jesus was passionate about God’s glory and about the salvation of humanity right to the end, that is about their real and true Joy.
’I have come so that the sheep have life and have life in overabundance.’
So it is a question of using our freedom to its best. Jesus is the door, the only door that gives access at the same time to refuge, prayer and mission.
Let us fear not, if during our lifetime we seek it with loyalty, this door will not shut in our face, but in our happiness, to shelter it for ever more.
We ned to join Jesus who leans towards us as he does towards Mary. ’He leans upon his humble servant’.
Jesus is always at our side, his wounded heart is our Light in all our hardships. It s the door through which a whole new humanity will be born, this passage through the wound in his Heart.
Let us ask for the grace to enter through the narrow gate so that
Look, there are those now last who will be first, and those now first who will be last."