Reflection for Tuesday, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Word

By


Fr. Aloysius Santiago sdb
Rector and Parish Priest
Don Bosco Shrine
Lingarajapuram, Bangalore

Mathew 7 : 13-14

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.


Today's Reflection

In the 1st reading, when it came to the choice of the land, Abram let Lot make the first choice, although as the elder, he could have make the choice first and he would have chosen the land to his advantage.

As expected, Lot chose the choice part of the land, but God rewarded Abram for his generosity and humility.

In the gospel reading Jesus speaks of two ways between which each person must choose.

The image of the two ways was widespread in the Old Testament and also in pagan philosophers.

Jesus compares the narrow gate and the hard road which the few take with the wide and spacious road which the many take.

He himself embodies the narrow gate and the hard road.

To take the narrow gate and the hard road is to follow him, to live by his teaching, especially as that teaching is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount from which we have been reading in recent days.

Jesus implies that many people will turn away from his teaching, will take other, easier, paths.

The Sermon on the Mount puts before us a very high ideal and the temptation is to keep it at arm’s length on the basis that it is not really for the average Christian.

Yet, Jesus addresses his teaching to everyone; we each have the same calling which we try to live out in the circumstances of our own lives.

The narrow gate and the hard road is one we are all asked to take.

In taking it Jesus assures us that we will find life, both now and beyond death.

The way of generosity and humility is the narrow gate, but it is a hard road that leads to life.


Resolution

Let us resolve to choose that narrow gate and hard road and we will find God's blessings on our choice.

GOD BLESS YOU 

Good morning. Have a nice safe day