Who walks the path to eternal life?

+ J. M. J. +

Homily Outline for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Who will be saved? Will I go to heaven? These questions rise up in our hearts, especially in the face of death or sickness. They rise up in our globalized world as we interact with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. They rise up as we encounter people with different beliefs, or those who profess no belief at all. In our popular culture, there is a widespread conclusion: pretty much everyone will go to heaven because God is love. We’re all going to a better place! Perhaps we make exceptions for the occasional mass murderer or terrorist, but by and large, it seems to me that we assume heaven.

There are points of truth in this position, but it certainly doesn’t correspond fully to the teaching of Christ, the witness of Scripture, the teaching of the Church. It doesn’t even correspond to our deepest desire for justice. Our readings this Sunday challenge us with the profound mystery that God calls and loves all people, and yet He is also a God of justice.

The people of Israel, from Abraham on down, understood that God had called them, but they often forgot that He had called them so as to bless all nations. Many times they were in conflict with their neighbors, but even in the midst of struggle, the voice of God kept reminding them, and us, that He has a plan to save all nations. God speaks through the prophet Isaiah in our first reading:

I come to gather nations of every language; they shall come and see my glory….they shall proclaim my glory among the nations. They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations as an offering to the LORD….

God calls all nations to full communion with Himself. This may not have been fully embraced by the people of Israel, but the promise and invitation were there. Our psalm today is the shortest psalm, 117, and it sums up God’s universal call very clearly:

Praise the LORD all you nations; glorify him, all you peoples! For steadfast is his kindness toward us, and the fidelity of the LORD endures forever.

God in perfect faithfulness calls all nations, every one of us, every human person, to full communion with His love and mercy, both in this life and in the next.

How, then, does God choose to draw us into His kingdom? In loving us and desiring that we freely love Him, God has always worked through the men, women, and children that He Himself calls… He has always entrusted His message and Himself to us, in all our frailty and inconstancy. Jesus didn’t write a book, He founded the Church, a living community enlivened by the Holy Spirit that He called to teach His truth by word and deed. The Church is made up of us, and since we are often weak and sinful, it limps. The Church is enlivened by the Holy Spirit, so despite our weakness, and in the midst of our weakness, the Gospel continues to be proclaimed, even in our own time. The Church is a hospital for sinners, but the Divine Physician is at work!

When Jesus is asked in our Gospel, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?,” He answers obliquely, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.” This is not the only place where Jesus describes the path towards eternal life as the narrow way, the steep way, the difficult way. Sin is very much at work in our world, as is the Prince of Lies. Without the truth of the Gospel, and without regular access to the grace of the Sacraments, we all too easily live lives of desperation, of despair, weighed down by our own sins and the sins of others. This is not Jesus’ desire for us, but it is the consequence of choosing what is false and dark.

Many do not know Christ through no fault of their own… indeed many do not know Christ precisely because we who do know Him have not preached Him with authentic love and zeal. God is not capricious, God is full of mercy, and we know that He will judge each person according to what they have been able to know. No one is condemned simply because they are not Catholic or Christian… but the Scriptures tell us repeatedly that it is possible to reject God and His mercy. God does not force anyone to love Him, and He will not force anyone to receive His mercy when they come before His judgment seat. Alexander Solzhenitsyn says it very beautifully:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar asked, “Dare we hope that all men be saved?” We do hope that every man woman and child will be saved, but we don’t assume. And as we hope in God and in His infinite mercy, we also remember His justice, and the real freedom He has given us. While no one is condemned because of what they do not know, nonetheless it is possible for a person to reject God’s mercy. Look at how we so often struggle, we to whom the fullness of the Gospel and the Sacraments have been entrusted. Is it any wonder that many who have not been given such rich gifts also give into despair and depravity? A world where knowledge of Jesus Christ is growing more and more distant from ordinary people’s minds and hearts is not a happy world, it is not a joyful world, it is not a peaceful world. Our young people for whom there are now so few moral guidelines, and so many opportunities to get drawn into darkness… they are not happier as a result!

If we hear these words of Jesus, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough,” the Church does not invite us to look at others with disdain or judgment… quite the contrary. We are invited to examine our own hearts, asking whether WE have responded generously, whether we have striven for Christ. And when we see others who do not know the Lord and His Church, we are not invited to look upon them with judgment. We are invited to trust God’s mercy, but also to trust that God intends His mercy to be active through us. He has entrusted Himself to us so that we might share that Good News! He has poured out the Living Word of God upon us, He has placed His own Body and Blood in our hands and on our lips so that we might share Him! God doesn’t toy with us, He doesn’t play games with us, and He has REALLY made us free! There are real, eternal, consequences to our choices in this life.

As we gather at this altar, then, and as we hear this challenging invitation, we are invited to trust God, to seek Him, but never to presume on His mercy, rather to seek it, and to seek to become instruments of that mercy. We hear in the Letter to the Hebrews:

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed

May we hear God’s call to conversion, to service, and to love. May we be healed and strengthened now by the most perfect gift and sacrifice of the Eucharist as we receive the Lord Jesus who died and rose to save us.

+ A. M. D. G +