The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Fr. Michael Brungardt
Isaiah 66:18-21 + Hebrews 12:5-7,11-13 + Luke 13:22-30
Difficult Goal? Better Have A Plan
A couple of years ago, ESPN and Netflix put out a documentary series called “The Last Dance,” a documentary on the life and career of Michael Jordan. And it was very popular. People loved getting an inside look into the life of Jordan, and were in awe at the extreme dedication he had to basketball, to greatness, to the workouts and diets and schedules and routine. And there are several of those documentaries coming out: Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Derek Jeter. People love getting the inside scoop into the extreme dedication these athletes have to greatness, to the pursuit of greatness. They have this difficult goal in front of them, and they go to extreme lengths to achieve this goal. They have a plan, and they are relentless in sticking to the plan. And it’s not just athletes: military personnel, musicians, priests, academics, teachers—all of these go through intense training, intense roads to reach this goal.
Consistency, discipline, extreme dedication to a goal, having a plan. If there is a goal you want to accomplish, a difficult goal you want to achieve, it’s going to take these things. No one disagrees with this!
That is until following Jesus is brought up. And that’s why these things Jesus says today can sound strange to our ears.
Have you ever seen those memes of #ThingsJesusNeverSaid? Pretty hilarious. It’s just a picture of Jesus and a quote followed by #ThingsJesusNeverSaid. Like, “You’re perfect just the way you are.” Or, “It doesn’t matter what you do as long as deep down you’re a good person.” People attribute many sayings to Jesus that we assume he would say if he were around today. But then we get readings like the Gospel today (a bunch of #ThingsJesusActuallySaid) and we’re like, “Whoa. That’s weird. Let’s just skip that bit.” But no! We can’t!
Today, Jesus lays down more hard sayings! “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.” That’s hard. “You will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’ Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!’” Ouch. What’s going on?
Following Jesus Christ, being his disciple, being a faithful Christian, experiencing the joys of his Kingdom—all of this doesn’t happen by accident. This is what Jesus is trying to get at!
This means getting really practical. Many get calendars from school and make your plans around whatever the school tells you to do. Many move mountains to show up to practices and games for their kids’ sports. Many make sure you show up to work on time, put in extra time for a raise, make time to go to the gym. But what about the most important thing in your life? The most important thing in your children’s lives, our faith? Many respond, “Eh, we’ll get to it if we have time.”
This time of the year, as school begins, I always think back to when I was growing up, and my parents would have us all sit down for a family meeting and we would set up the “Rule” for the family that coming year, a “Rule of Life.” In a monastery (with monks or nuns), there is a rule of life which guides the house. St. Benedict would say that the rule is what allows a house to
become a “school in the Lord’s service.” So a rule of life is like a trellis, like what vines grow on? Just like a trellis guides the growth of a vine, our rule of life was meant to guide the growth of our family, to become a house that was a “school in the Lord’s service.”
And the discipline of this “Rule,” this “narrow gate,” was all because my parents had a specific goal in mind: they want us to be saints, to be heroic disciples of Jesus Christ, to find true happiness by following Him. And what parent wouldn’t want that for their child? Don’t you want that for your kids? For yourself?
Perhaps you need to write out a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule. Begin to literally schedule time to pray throughout the day. Begin to literally plan times for your family to eat dinner together. Put Sunday Mass on your calendar first and then fit everything else in around it.
What it comes down to is this. Maybe Christ is asking us to make a more concerted effort to follow him. Maybe this won’t happen accidentally, but through our dedication to it. And maybe there is a greater joy, a greater happiness, a more real and authentic experience of faith waiting for you as you enter through this narrow gate.