By Rev. Joe
McCloskey, SJ
At the time, all
discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the
peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it. So strengthen your drooping hands and your
weak knees. Make straight paths for your
feet, that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed. Hebrews 12:11-13
“Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for
many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough. Luke
13:24
Piety
Piety is seen in the narrow road we follow. Our closeness to the Lord is the measure of
our Piety. We walk at his side when we
love one another. He invites us to
surrender all the things in our life that compete for our attention to the Lord. The narrow gate is a door within the door of
the gate to Jerusalem where you can only enter one by one. You cannot ride through that gate on the lap
of luxury. There is nothing we can take
with us as we go through that gate. Naked
we came into the world with the love of God and naked we will go out except for
the love of God we have held unto. We do
not want to be turned down at the gate. God
will recognize us in what we have done for the least ones of our lives. We do not have to worry about our place on
the line. The first shall be last and
the last will be first.
Study
Love of the cross of Christ comes from our prayer. The gradual dawning awareness comes home
slowly that we can be identified with Christ who is our way, our truth and our
life, by the way we carry the crosses of our life in his name. Our study of the meaning of the cross of
Christ opens us to awareness that God disciplines those he acknowledges as
Disciples of Christ. We try to listen to
the invitation of Christ by our prayer and our prayer allows us to carry our
crosses as his disciples and friends. Christ
calls us to a closeness that has its strongest expression in how we carry our
crosses of life. Our desire to be his disciples
is seen in the joy we have in suffering in the name of Christ.
Action
The cross belongs to Christ when we have done everything
possible to avoid it by hard work and proper preparation and it is still there. The cross is not the result of our laziness. It is rather the something extra we must put
out if we are to help a friend in need or do what no one else is trying to do
for the sake of a better world. We
strengthen our drooping hands and our weak knees by pushing the envelope. No one comes to the Father without doing
their best to accompany Christ in the hungry, thirsty, sick, homeless and the
prisoners. What we do for the least ones
in our life is how we enter the narrow gate.
The door of heaven is never locked to those who put out their best effort
in the name of the Lord for the needy of their lives.
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