the last who are first ~ reflex on Lk 13:22-30

“Will only a few people be saved?”

The question suggests a concern about how difficult it is to be saved. Is it so difficult that only a few people will achieve it, or is it easy enough even for me? How hard do I have to work for this?

Jesus has an opportunity to say what we want to hear: “No worries. Just be nice and share, smile and say a prayer. I’m doing all the hard work for you. You just have to accept me as your Lord and Savior and you’ll be fine.”

But that’s not how he answers.

He tells us that we must enter through a “narrow gate,” that many are not strong enough, that even saying that we know him will not ensure that he will let us in at that critical moment. Some will be called “evildoers” and told to depart! Jesus does not sugar-coat that terrible moment when “there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” by those who have been “cast out.”

Jesus does not ever hold out a comfortable, easy, self-satisfying journey along a smooth road. He tells us (and shows us by his own life and death) that it will be difficult, that we will have to stand against “the world,” that we must take up our cross, strive with all our strength to travel the narrow path, to follow him along the trail he has blazed for us. Those whose love is only superficial and external will not be allowed to enter, not because God has slammed the door, but because they refused to go through it when it was opened, by refusing His friendship and love.

Jesus also reminds us that those who seem great – or even holy – to our human judgment may not be so in truth. And some who are humble and forgotten are the very ones who will be reclining at table in the Kingdom of God. In God’s perfect judgment, all injustice will be corrected: “Some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” So we must learn to appreciate the expression of God’s justice in Mary’s Magnificat: “He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation… He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich has sent away empty.”

Lord, help me be content to be among the last in this world – the few, the small - so that I can be among the first in Your Kingdom of Love!