Fr. Michael Williams

I don’t normally quote the Rev. Ian Paisley, but I heard an amusing story about the time when he was preaching to his congregation about the place ‘where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth’. One old dear in his congregation shouted out, ‘Reverend Paisley I won’t go to that place because I have no teeth’. Ian Paisley replied in his bellowing voice, ‘Teeth will be provided’!

Today’s gospel tells us that ‘the narrow door’ leads to the Kingdom of God. In St Matthew’s version of today’s gospel Jesus goes further when He says, ‘Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to destruction is wide and spacious and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it’ (Matt 7:12-14).

Many people in today’s world have reversed this gospel passage and in effect are saying that wide is the gate that leads to Heaven. But that’s not what Jesus said. He said ‘it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life’.

So what does the narrow door and the hard road entail? St John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic from the sixteenth century- who himself suffered much, when he was imprisoned and tortured by the Spanish Inquisition, for trying to reform the Church in Spain at the time- says that the narrow door is the way of the cross: the Christian way involves carrying the cross. And this road leads to life. ‘Suffering is part of your training’, as it says in the letter to the Hebrews today. St Rose of Lima, who suffered much in her life in Peru, said a similar thing, ‘without the Cross there is no road to Heaven’.

We have to go with what the Sacred Scriptures and the great wisdom of the Saints reveals. We may not fully understand this way of the narrow door, this hard road, but we can put our faith in this path of life. Because it is the one our leader and guide chose.

Please God we will all continue to strive to enter through the narrow gate, but what awaits us once through this narrow gate?

Jesus says there is feasting and celebration, there is a reunion with our ancestors, and there are faces we may not have expected to see there!

We might even see Ian Paisley there! But just let’s make sure we’re there.