21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

The question Jesus is asked in today’s Gospel —
“Lord, will only a few people be saved?” —
seems like a natural question to ask.
After all, when you are entering a contest
you kind of want to know
how hard it might be to win it.
Jesus’ answer is frustratingly indirect,
but it doesn’t sound like the odds are very good:
“Strive to enter through the narrow gate,”
but “many” who “attempt to enter…
will not be strong enough.”
It also sounds, however,
as if the consequences of losing the contest
are disturbingly severe:
those who find themselves on the outside
will depart to wail and grind their teeth.
Sobering news.
The kingdom of God, it might seem,
has sharply policed borders
and stringent conditions for admission.

But at the end of this sobering news
the words of Jesus take a somewhat different turn.
He says that “people will come
from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.”
Rather than a single point of entry,
and a narrow one at that,
Jesus speaks in a way reminiscent of our first reading,
from the end of the book of the prophet Isaiah,
which speaks of how God will “come to gather
nations of every language,”
and that this multitude will stream
to God’s holy mountain in Jerusalem
“on horses and in chariots,
in carts, upon mules and dromedaries,”
a mighty caravan of new citizens for God’s kingdom.
The people of God is made up
of all sorts and conditions of humanity.
The table at which they feast
seems capable of infinite expansion.
The kingdom of God, it seems,
has open borders.

So, which is it?
Is God’s kingdom entered
through a single, narrow gate,
a gate that many will fail to enter,
or is it a kingdom into which
a multitude will stream
from all directions?
Perhaps it is somehow both.

When we hear the call of Jesus,
we hear the call to strive:
the call to strengthen our drooping hands
and our weak knees,
the call to learn obedience
through the discipline of the cross.
St. Ignatius Loyola, in the very first of his Spiritual Exercises,
directs us to imagine ourselves before Christ on his cross,
and to ask ourselves,
what have I done for Christ?
what am I doing for Christ?
what ought I to do for Christ?
If we call ourselves followers and companions of Jesus,
then of course we ought to strive to serve him.

But there is a danger and a temptation in our striving.
As I ask myself what I have done for Christ,
I might forget what Christ has done for me.
As I try to calculate how much striving is necessary,
I might forget that God’s grace is beyond calculation.
As I can strive to enter the narrow gate,
I might forget that my salvation
is not a reward for my striving
but the free gift of God,
won for me through the passion, death,
and resurrection of Christ.
There is a reason why St. Ignatius directs us
to imagine Jesus on the cross
before asking ourselves
what we have done, are doing, or will do for him.
Because all our striving should be nothing but
our grateful response to what Christ
already has done, is doing, and will do for us.
We are saved first and foremost
not by adherence to a code of conduct or a creed—
as important as those things are—
but by being drawn into the narrow gate
of the love of Christ crucified.

And here we can see how the glorious vision
of the multitude steaming into God’s kingdom
can fit with Jesus’ command
to strive to enter the narrow gate.
For if we strive to enter into the crucified love of Jesus
we begin to see the world as he sees it:
not divided into strivers and non-strivers,
but one giant herd of lost sheep that he longs to shepherd.
We begin to see that the love that we have received
is not a love cautiously measured out
but one that pours forth from his pierced heart,
a love that cannot be contained,
a love with unpoliced borders
that embraces a multitude.

Jesus calls us to enter through the narrow gate,
but that is a gate that leads us
into the heart of Jesus himself,
who loves us and saves us not because of our striving
but because of his own goodness and generosity.
So let us make our own the prayer
with which St. Ignatius concludes
his “Contemplation to Attain Divine Love”:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

my memory, my understanding,

and my entire will,

All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.

To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace,

that is enough for me. 

Amen.

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Watch this homily here.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12: 32-48

Imagine that you see me at the train station:
you see me repeatedly check my watch,
check the arrival board,
perhaps check my appearance
in some reflective surface.
At a particular moment,
you see me stand up
and move toward the entrance
to a specific platform,
looking intently at the crowd.
You see a look of recognition cross my face
as I approach a woman and kiss her
(you surmise—correctly—that this must be my wife)
and then you see us happily depart the station together.
If someone were to ask you what I was doing
when you saw me at the station,
you would likely say
that I was waiting for someone.

Now imagine that you see me
on another occasion at the train station:
you see me browse the magazine rack at a newsstand,
buy an iced coffee at Starbucks,
stare blankly at crowds of people departing the trains,
yawn, scratch, read the paper, blow my nose,
and, eventually, leave the station alone,
having done a bunch of stuff
without any obvious single purpose.
If someone were to ask you what I was doing at the station
you would probably not say
that I was waiting for anyone or anything.
You might say instead that I was “loitering”
or, maybe, if you wanted to make me sound less criminal,
“killing time.”

“Waiting” is something different from simply “killing time.”
Waiting is not merely hanging around as time passes;
it is about your life coming into focus
around the person or thing that you are awaiting.
When you await someone or something,
your anticipation gives shape to time.
Every moment is given meaning and significance
by the act of waiting
because each moment moves you closer
to that for which you wait.

Killing time, in contrast,
is shapeless, formless, directionless.
Time moves forward, but isn’t going anywhere;
passing moments have no particular significance,
no particular goal or end.
Killing time is, frankly, boring;
as the term itself suggests,
it renders time lifeless.
Waiting, on the other hand, brings time to life,
as our moments are filled with meaning.

In today’s Gospel reading
Jesus calls on us to live lives of waiting,
not lives of merely killing time:
“be like servants who await
their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately
when he comes and knocks.”
Jesus speaks of your lamp being lighted
and your loins being girded—
symbols of wakefulness and readiness for action.
The servants whom the master commends
are not those who pass their hours killing time,
but those who keep an active watch
for the one whom they await.
The passing of time for these servants
is not the slow trickling away of life,
but a mighty flow that carries them
toward the arrival for which they wait.

The master whom we are awaiting
is Jesus himself, of course.
He is the master who returns from the wedding,
who with his arrival brings with him
a measure of that celebration’s joy.
Indeed, he bids his waiting servants
take their place at his table
so that he can serve them and share with them
all that he has received from his Father.
Jesus is the one whose awaited arrival
brings time to life,
gives form and direction and meaning
to the moments of which our days are made.
To be his disciple, to know him as master,
is to stand with lamp lighted and loins girded,
ready at every moment to welcome his arrival.
To await him is to accept time itself
not as something to be endured or killed,
but as God’s gift to us
to be used for God’s glory.

Yet even before the master returns
the time that he gives us,
the time that is brought to life by awaiting him,
is already filled full with his presence.
Indeed, the one we await arrives
at an hour we do not expect
because is arriving at every moment.
He comes to us invisibly,
in the gift of grace.
He comes to us visibly,
in the poor,
the imprisoned,
the stranger,
the suffering,
in all those we serve for his sake.
He comes to us in the Eucharist that we celebrate,
sharing with us the joyful wedding feast of the Lamb,
bidding us to receive from him
the food and drink of eternity.
We wait for one
who is already present with us in our waiting.

Time given over to awaiting the master
who arrives at every moment
is time that carries us forward
into the fullness of God’s kingdom.
Time given over to our own pursuits,
our self-made goals and personal agendas,
is simply killing time,
no matter how important
those goals and agendas might seem.
The call of Jesus in today’s Gospel
is to embrace time as God’s gift to us
and to use it for God’s glory,
standing ready
with lamps lighted and loins girded,
servants awaiting the master
who gives life to our days of waiting.
As I begin my ministry with you
here at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
I pray that our days together
will not be merely killing time
but will be time that is filled full
of the presence of the one
whose arrival we await.

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Watch this homily here.