Homily for 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 24, 2025
Luke 13: 22-30
Collect
Is 66: 18-21
The Fountains, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

Gate into the stockade at Fort Necessity (reconstruction)
Fort Necessity National Battlefield
Great Meadows, near Farmington, Penn.

“Jesus answered, ‘Strive to enter thru the narrow gate’” (Luke 13: 24).

It’s a fact that God wishes to give eternal life and eternal happiness to every man and woman he’s created.  The catechism that many of us studied in our youth taught us that “God made us to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next world.”

God expressed his universal desire more than once thru the prophet Isaiah, e.g., in our 1st reading:  “I come to gather nations of every language; they shall come and see my glory” (66:18).

God wisely planted that desire also in our hearts, so that our desires and his should be in harmony.  St. Augustine famously wrote, “You’ve made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

We prayed in the collect that God grant his people the desire for what he promises, the desire for eternal life, the desire to “recline at table in the kingdom of God,” as Jesus says today (Luke 13:29), the desire to take part joyfully in the banquet of eternal life—the “supper of the Lamb,” as we say before Holy Communion.

But there’s only one way to get into the kingdom:  “Strive to enter thru the narrow gate.”  In one of his sayings about being the Good Shepherd, Jesus tells us, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep” (John 10:7), which is similar to his telling us at the Last Supper:  “I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except thru me” (John 14:6), which we heard a moment ago before the gospel.  Jesus’ way of life, his way of journeying to the Father, is the narrow gate.

Further along in today’s gospel, he warns that at a certain time the master of the house will lock the door (Luke 13:25), and when he does, no one else will be admitted.  Those locked out he doesn’t know, he calls evildoers, and he orders to depart (13:27).  Colloquially, we can say he commands them to get lost; and they are, indeed, lost.

Then how are we to pass thru that narrow gate and gain admission to the master’s table and enjoy “the supper of the Lamb”?  We prayed earlier that we might love what God commands.  Jesus told his disciples repeatedly that if we love him we’ll keep his commands, and his principal command is that we love God and one another; that we praise God, serve God, give God glory, seek to do his will—“thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”; and that we be compassionate and merciful to our fellow men and women, to all God’s children, like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ famous parable (Luke 10:29-37).  In that way, “our hearts are fixed on that place where true gladness is found” (Collect)—fixed on the heavenly table and on Jesus and his way of love.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches:  “The gate is wide and road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter thru it are many.  How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life.  And those who find it are few” (Matt 7:13-14).  Like the Marines, Jesus wants “a few good men”—and women too, obviously.  The wide road to destruction—to the loss of one’s soul—is the way of selfishness, greed, lust, deception, and vengeance.  The narrow gate of Jesus’ chosen few is the way of loving and serving our families, neighbors, and even the “nations of every language,” “all your brothers and sisters from all the nations,” as Isaiah says (66:20).  Enlist among his few; “strive to enter thru the narrow gate.”