Presider: Fr. Matthew Widder Parish: Holy Name of Jesus, St. Clement & St. Dominic
Choir: St. Richard
The question that Jesus has addressed in the gospel today is 'the' question that is perhaps one of the most important questions in life that speaks to our future. How many people will be saved? In other words, how many people are in heaven? And Jesus' answer is interesting because Jesus does not say, no one is in heaven. Jesus doesn't say every single person that ever lived is in heaven. Instead he gives us the deeper question, the deeper meaning, he gives us the road to eternal life. And he says, “Enter through the narrow gate. Enter through the narrow gate. And so we might say, "what's the narrow gate?" and how do we get there? I think of this example of a woman who was sharing about her grandmother who died. The grandmother had a huge funeral and she was saying how her grandma was like the epitome of a person of faith. She was always doing things as a faithful person. She was helping in pregnancy centers, she was involved in St. Vincent de Paul, she was going to daily mass... Most of all if you talked to her you knew very clearly that she loved Jesus. She loved Jesus, it oozed out of her in the most genuine way. But at the funeral there was a group of people that she was talking to, she didn't really know them, but she said something kind of insightful about her relationship. She said, you know what we loved your grandma from a distance. We loved your grandma from a distance. And what does that mean? We love our grandma from a distance. Sometimes we see all things she'd do and we say that's wonderful! We love what you're doing but we know if we get too close to that person, we're going to be doing all the things! Like she's going to be dragging us around and we might not be ready for that. And so we kind of kept her at a distance. And its interesting because what do the people say to Jesus? We drank in your company and you taught in our streets. But did they really know Jesus? No. They loved Jesus, but from a distance. They loved Jesus but from a distance. And that's the trap that so often we can get ourselves in, in our life. We can look at our faith like a gym membership. We believe in the goodness of exercise. We believe like, "Oh it'd be good to have a membership to get in shape" but you've got to go through the doors, right? It's not good enough just to have the membership. You have to live the membership. You have to live it out and then so what does Jesus say? That narrow gate. That narrow gate and what do we see as the narrow gate? The narrow gate in finding Jesus is that everything in the world is backwards. It's kind of backwards. It's the narrow gate. How do we see the backwardness of our world and the truth of Jesus? And here's what I mean by that. What does Jesus say? The last shall be first. That's what he says in the gospel today. In our world, we say the first shall be first! In the reading from Hebrews what do we hear? Do not disdain the discipline of the Lord, oh gosh! We don't like pain and suffering, right? And what do we hear in other places of the scriptures? If you want to live what do you have to do? You have to die. You want to gain your life? What do you have to do, lose your life. And so that's the freedom of the gospel. The narrow way is to see the paradox of the gospel that in losing our life, that in dying of ourselves, we don't have to strive anymore and we gain everything in Christ. And so we say, “Jesus, help us to give our hearts more fully to you. Help us to love you not just from a distance but for your life and your breath of the Holy Spirit to take over and fill every part of our being.
Entrance: Here At This Table
©1996, 2000, Janet Sullivan Whitaker and James Maxwell Whitaker. Published by OCP. All rights reserved.
Psalm 117: Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
Music: Owen Alstott © 1977, 1990, OCP All rights reserved
Preparation: Only This I Want
Text based on Philippians 3:7-16; 2:15, 18. Text and music © 1981, OCP. All rights reserved.
Communion: Ubi Caritas
Refrain and vss. 1, 2, 5 text based on Ubi Caritas, 9th cent.; verses 3, 4 text Bob Hurd;
Spanish text by Pedro Rubalcava. Text and music © 1996, 2004, Bob Hurd. Published by OCP All rights reserved.
Sending Forth: Lead Me, Lord
Text: Matthew 5:3-12; 7:7, 13; John 14:6. Text and music © 1987, John D. Becker.
Published by OCP Publications. All rights reserved.
Mass Setting: Celtic Mass
Text © 2010, ICEL. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Music © 1996, 2009, 2010, Christopher Walker. Published by OCP. All rights reserved.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this liturgy obtained from ONE LICENSE, License No. A-718591.
www.HeartoftheNation.org
0 Comments