21st Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025
Isaiah 66:18-21 Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13 Luke 13:22-30
We might well ask what prompted the ‘someone’ in today’s Gospel story to ask the question of Jesus, ‘Sir, will there be only a few saved?’ Was this person one of the self-righteous Pharisees who asked with a degree of smugness feeling certain that he would be a shoo-in to Heaven? Or perhaps it was a follower who was fearful and humble fearing to be unworthy of being saved.
Each of us might, at times, identify to a certain extent with either one of them. But all of us know that there will be life hereafter and we need to be ready and prepared. One way or another we hope that there will be more than ‘the few saved’.
The answer that Jesus gives to the inquirer is both vague and specific!! “Try you best to enter by the narrow door” and then “many will not succeed”. The image of the ‘’narrow door’ may suggest difficulty in entering into the heavenly kingdom but what the Lord is suggesting that those who wish to be saved must focus on what is important. He wants his disciples to be single-minded in response to their call to be His disciples and to have faith in His promise of eternal life.
The cry ‘Lord, Lord open to us’ is repeated a few times in the parables of Jesus with the warning that it is not enough to keep calling out without actually doing the will of the Father. But throughout the New Testament the assurance for disciples is that the Lord has come to redeem and save us and that ‘for those who love God, everything works out for the good’ (Rom 8) and St Paul is full of confidence in the joy of the Kingdom (Rom 6, 1 Cor 15). Paul is constantly correcting his communities but he never envisages them being lost. There will be no weeping or gnashing of teeth – only the triumph of Christ.
The promises of the Scriptures are well expressed in our first Reading today ‘I am coming to gather the nations of every language’. So, it is not just the ones like the self-righteous questioner who will be saved. Those who are ‘from east and west, from north and south’ who are humble and afraid, who are faithful and sinners will ‘come to the feast’.
The ‘feast’ in the Kingdom of God is one of the three images of heaven that the Lord gives us today. And the other images are just as down-to-earth and homely for us as we try to imagine what heaven is like.
The Jews had a great sense of their ancestry …. The idea of meeting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the prophets was appealing to them just as we would like to imagine ‘meeting with our loved ones’ and the saints whom we have imitated in our lives.
Then we are reminded that God alone is the perfect judge and when we enter the heavenly home we may be surprised at those in the highest places and lowest places, if indeed such exist! Many of those whom we considered ‘losers’ in this life may be covered in glory with very shiny halos and perhaps the ones who seemed pious and outwardly upright may be far back in the line when genuine charity is uncovered. But, more likely, all will be equal.
‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we shall come to them’