MidWeek Reflection—Are You on the Narrow Road?
Enforcing the lesson from Sunday's Gospel for further reflection
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus warns his followers to seek the narrow road. He says the wide road is filled with the people who choose it. If we seek to be Jesus’ disciples we must follow the narrow road but aside from the width, He does not define it.
If we look at the factions inside the church obviously we will see many types of groups of people accusing each other of being on the wide road. The traditionists claim those who are not part of their company are on the wide road of modernism.
Many who embrace Catholicism in this contemporary time look upon the traditionists as embracing a rite at the expense of the word.
“You are on the wide road.” “No, I am not, you are.”
However, would it be safe to say that both are right and wrong? Each one in the various groups points to the others for being on the wide road but so are they.
Who would be on the narrow road? The ones who cannot fit into categories. The ones who seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The ones who submit to His leadership by being committed and faithful to prayer as He leads them on the narrow road. They will leave the others behind. Obviously, that road will be the least comfortable which makes it, by default, less popular.
Notice the prophets who suffered desperately for their calling to speak in the name of the Lord. How many of them suffered rejection by the leaders of the community? All of them. I always cite two who asked God to kill them—Moses and Elijah and one who cursed the day he was born—Jeremiah. They were, like others—set apart and walked a totally different road.
Business gives us a good model to follow
Let us take the same idea and use it within the context of business. Who makes it farthest in business? It is not the one who does what others do, it is the one who throws convention to the wind and follows a different vision. Steve Jobs may have not been a model Catholic, I don’t know if he even had a religion, but from a business perspective, he changed everything including even how Microsoft did business. Those who embraced certain schools of business would reject him for walking the road they would not. Yet, to this day, his legacy is being the one and only Steve Jobs.
Let us go back to Jesus. Whom did Jesus serve? He did not serve the leaders of the community. The people who spoke his praises suffered rejection by others. Let’s take the woman at the well. She, on her sixth “husband” was an outcast from the community, yet it was to her that he came. Why, because the people on the wide road will seek out whom everyone else will seek. He came to seek the most lost. The most lost are those who fall through the cracks of community, family and faith. The people on the narrow road seek out the most lost.
Whom else did he help? Those willing to challenge him. The Phoenician woman asked Jesus to heal her daughter and he rejected her because she was a pagan. She fought back and challenged him. He healed her daughter. She did not cower in his face but challenged his authority because she understand his mission and challenged him when he did not receive it.
He also healed a crippled man to the consternation of those who embraced the rules over the human needs of another. He walked a narrow road in serving others who fell through the cracks and remained unattended by those following the laws. They believed they were doing the right thing but Jesus redefined the nature of the right thing.
Remember, Jesus is not only putting his words into action, He is modeling behavior and He calls others to do the same thing.
Who would be walking the narrow road today?
First, let’s ask who would not be on the narrow road and some of the answers are obvious. The narrow road is where few people go, so your faith cannot be popular with any large groups. Therefore, it would not be connected to any political party or political movement.
It would not be popular among the bourgeoisie or the movers and shakers of society so your faith would not be connected to any social groups or movements.
If you model your faith on Jesus’ actions then many of the people to whom you minister would be those who fall through the cracks. These would be the people who can get no help from the government, community groups or others who have criteria that excludes many. They just get lost in the cracks. Jesus would reach out to them because the people on the wide road are too busy helping others.
You would suffer vehement rejection by those who embraced the law to such a degree they stifled the spirit. You would teach people what it meant to receive the Eucharist, why it is such a Holy Sacrament but you would not act like the eucharist police and shame those whom you felt should not receive. Some would choose not to receive because they heard and understood your pastoral teaching not because you threatened them with Hell. You would not condemn, you would educate and convert.
So now the question to ask yourself: Would you be on the narrow road today? If you were, what would your life be like? You have to realize that the narrow road would be lonely and it would be one that would be unpopular with the movers and shakers of the Church. It would be populated by the humble before the lord, the docile to grace and the obedient to the spirit but it would not be submissive to the culture, the political parties or the current ideas church leaders embrace while they exclude others.
It would be through following a model that Jesus gave to us of bringing the love of God where it was not found otherwise. However, Jesus did that while walking the narrow road and that road has a dead end which leads to a new beginning.