Sunday 25 August 2013

Raymond Homily Sunday, 25 August 2013


Fr. Raymond


Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 13:22-30.

"Sir, will there be only a few saved?" v. 30 ...


Sun 21 C 2013
“Sir, will there be only a few saved?” Jesus’ answer to this awkward question more or less amounted to: “That’s none of your business”.

We can presume that the reason for this was that if the answer was ‘yes, only a very few will be saved’ then we would all be very much discouraged and even perhaps despairing, knowing that we could hardly call ourselves exceptionally virtuous.  On the other hand, if the answer was ‘no, the vast majority of souls will be saved’ then we might become presumptious and not bother trying to live a very good life since we could be reasonably sure that we were in much the same boat as most people and therefore sure of salvation.

But Jesus points to ‘the narrow door’ and indicates that we must strive, we must try hard, to enter there.  Jesus sums it up in another place where he says that ‘ the kingdom of God suffers violence and it is the violent who conquer it’.  The attitude to the kingdom of heaven that Jesus wants us to adopt is not one of numbers; how many will be saved? but one of striving; one of trying to love the Lord our God with all our mind and heart and soul; one of longing and hope.  Christian tradition depicts the virtue of Hope as an anchor that the soul casts up into the clouds to catch a hold of heaven for us so that we can haul ourselves up there by it.
The more we hope for it the more surely do we attain it.


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