Twenty-first Sunday of the Year, C - August 22, 2004

    For the last couple of weeks or so, the Gospel readings at Mass – Sundays and weekday Masses – have often been about the Kingdom of heaven with warnings concerning the possibility of missing out on entering the Kingdom. Some people express discomfort at hearing these warnings, but I remind them that makes about as much sense as someone, driving down the highway at top speed, complaining about a warning sign that the bridge ahead has been washed out: “Why do they put up those kinds of signs,” we can well hear the complainer say, “that just spoil the comfort of the journey?” Our Lord gives us one those kinds of warnings in today’s Gospel about the Kingdom of God. Better not to complain; rather to listen….
    Historians tell us that the huge St. Peter’s Square in Rome used to be hidden. That is, the long, broad avenue that empties straight on into the square is a 20th century addition. Before that addition, the pilgrim would have to wind his way through narrow streets, picking his way between houses that blocked the view and much of the sunlight. Until, until all of a sudden, around the last turn.... there it would be -- the immense open space almost surrounded by a colonnade, two huge gushing fountains, wide expanse of sky overhead, and the looming front of St. Peter’s Basilica itself, white in the blinding light of the Italian sun.
    Must have been quite an effect -- passing through those narrow paths and low stone gateways into that vast, monumental piazza. Must have been quite an effect. Must be something like what our Lord is talking about in today’s gospel. At least, that’s how I imagine it. “Try to come through the narrow door.” Oh, how narrow it does seem sometimes to those who have yet to go through it! “Lord,” someone asked Jesus, “are they few in number who are to be saved?” “Try to come in,” He replied; “try to come in through the narrow door.”
    Narrow. Narrow is the door into the Kingdom of God. Narrow and narrow for a reason. So narrow that only the person himself or herself can manage to squeeze through. Only the person, only who we really are and not all the baggage that we would like to bring with us -- all the things we possess and identify ourselves with, all the pretenses, the refusals to own up to our failings and sins, all that baggage. How embarrassing -- even if we managed to drag it all along with us -- how embarrassing it would all be anyway in the brilliant light of the open square of God’s kingdom.
    They tell me that it used to be that when an emperor or empress of Austria would die, that the royal guards, with much ado and fanfare, would take the body in a huge and elaborate carriage through streets of Vienna -- that beautiful city -- up to the doors of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Once there an officer would stride forward and pound on the door for the priests to open up. The bishop would ask, “Who’s there?” And the guard would respond, “His royal majesty, the Emperor of Austria, the King of Hungary….” And off would roll a whole list of titles and names. “Don’t know him,” the bishop would answer. Again, the guard would pound on the door and demand entrance. “Who’s there?” came the question repeated. And again, a whole new list of titles, honors and names. “Don’t know him.” Finally, no more pounding but a gentle knock. “Who’s there?” would be heard the bishop’s voice. And this time the officer responds, “A poor sinner.” And the door would swing open, just enough to admit a poor sinner, but once through the portal what an immensity of wonder and beauty in that church that was designed to paint the very picture of heaven.
    How narrow the door -- having to leave so much outside! But this is exactly what Job meant when he said, “Naked I came into this world, and naked I shall leave it.” On the other side of death, though -- if we believe anything about our Catholic Faith -- on the other side is the Kingdom fully come. Jesus said in today’s Gospel: “People will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and will take their place at the feast in the kingdom of God.”
    We can take great comfort in the fact that the door opens for poor sinners. It’s almost simple, for our Lord in another place said, “Just ask, just ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, just knock, and it will be opened to you.”
    Well, then, if it is so simple, why did our Lord say in today’s Gospel, “Many, I tell you, will try to enter and be unable....There will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets safe in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves rejected.” How so? Perhaps for two reasons. They knock, they try to enter with all that baggage; or they try too late, too late after the door has been opened and closed for the last time -- a thought almost too grim to contemplate.
    Again, the door is narrow, as our Lord described it. Too narrow for a person with a load of falsehoods, with that big bundle of rationalizations for sins committed, that overstuffed bag of refusals to fess up and be honest with oneself, with others, and with God; too narrow for all that, but just about right, just wide enough for a poor sinner whose heart longs for holiness and purity and goodness and justice, whose heart then asks, seeks and knocks. And lo, the door is opened to the sunlit square, to the vaulted roof of heaven, to a whole new life both in the here and now and in the life to come.
    For a long time now I have felt sorrow for those who do not have faith (for I was once faithless), sorrow for those who do not believe in an after-life or heaven. For them the world ends somewhere out there in the coldness of interstellar space, and life entails 60, 70 or 80 years here, most of those years spent in decline. Perhaps as children they were deprived of those wonderful children’s stories, those fantastic tales of worlds set right, stories that use the narrow door of the imagination to plant the seeds of intimations of eternity into young hearts. I don’t know. Nowadays children sit in front of the television and watch movies in which people are riddled with bullets. Then our kids trip on off to their sex education classes. And their childhood is taken from them, and maybe much more. Maybe also their very ability to dream of a better world, much less heaven. I don’t know. But how sad – for whatever reason – to miss the narrow door to the kingdom, the narrow door that indeed is this life on earth, through which we pass and by God’s marvelous, inviting and welcoming grace find our winding way to heaven... if we but let God have His way with us, with me, with you….