The Wide Road of Misuse of Matt 7:13–14 and Luke 13:22–25

Many homilists and other Catholic and Christian preachers greatly misuse the Parable of the Narrow and Wide Road leading to the respective sized gates (Matthew 7: 13–14) or doors (Luke 13:22–25).

Near the end of the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew, Jesus exhorts his listeners to walk the narrow road leading to the narrow gate for wide is the road that leads to perdition. The obvious point of the road is that it is less used.

Unfortunately, many preachers use it in the context of sin. So, the sinful person will walk the wide road to the respective gate and be one of an overwhelming multitude proverbially traveling it. If you study this passage carefully, you will see little having to do with this common interpretation. In fact, in Matthew, the phrase follows Jesus' admonition to live the Golden Rule — treating others as we would want to be treated. This is the key to entering the narrow gate. In Luke, it is the rich who cannot enter through the narrow door.

Luke places the phrase in the answer to the question will many be saved. Jesus says to strive to enter through the narrow door without defining what that means. This scenario follows a passage of healing a crippled woman on the Sabbath where the pharisees condemn him. So, to enter through the narrow gate, we must treat others respectfully, with human dignity and in charity in the spirit but not necessarily by the letter of the law.

Living Christ is more than simply not sinning

There is a wide chasm between living the law and the prophets and simply not committing sin. In fact, it is my teaching that the latter is actually a form of paganism. Many atheists live the last seven of the ten commandments. Many may actually live them better than some Christians including Catholics.

Some of our people believe the way to go to Heaven is to be good people but they have no context of how such a person lives. So, they see being good as the culture defines it.

Does a good person by definition give away all possessions and live in the desert? Or does a good person march for a cause? Or does a good person simply live life and mind their own business? Just what does that phrase mean? How does it apply to walking a narrow road or entering a narrow gate?

Many indeed believe being a good person may preclude one from the obligation to go to weekly Mass or even receive the Eucharist. They believe Mass attendance helps one to be good, but if one is good enough why does he or she have to go to Mass, they are already good enough to get to Heaven, aren’t they? So many do not participate in Sunday liturgy for this reason. They would argue with you all day that they are walking the narrow path and show that they live a good life. Others disagree with Church teaching so they do not attend Mass but they are good in secular terms so they are walking the narrow road in their own mind. Of course, they are misinformed.

Jesus does not define his terms

Jesus never defined the saved in terms of civil behavior. The one who walks the narrow road is the one who treats his neighbor as he himself would want to be treated. Therefore, the celibate priest who uses incendiary language against those who may seek Christ but still have a life of some difficult sin is not following Jesus’ command. He is therefore not walking the narrow road. Indeed, the sinners he condemns may be negotiating that path better than he believes.

Jesus warned the pharisees that God says: It is mercy I desire and not sacrifice. Therefore, the merciful Christian walks the narrow road not the one who fasts, does self-mortification and speaks to people in the pejorative. We do not proscribe fasting and even self-mortification but if they do not bear fruit in charitable behavior, they are meaningless.

This is why we have to be careful of the use of this verse. I was at a weekly meeting of priests and we read a well-known Catholic author with whom I do not always agree. He focused on this verse which further got my back up. It was my turn to speak to the group of my interpretation of these Gospel words. I made it clear I rejected his teaching and felt that he was misusing Jesus’ meaning. The author like many other Catholic speakers and authors called people to live a moral behavior completely void of the context in which one finds these words in the Bible. If you do not define what it means to walk the narrow road except in a commonly accepted morality then you are not correctly teaching Jesus’ words.

Anyone can use Jesus words’ to teach morality. Many non-Christians do, but Our Lord call us to a higher standard of behavior of seeing others through His loving eyes and for whom he gave his life. This includes ourselves.

So let us look at how we can use this verse in a more correct manner.

If there is one thing I teach regularly and probably add to every homily it is this: Catholic teaching says you cannot live the Catholic faith if you do not pray. Therefore, if we are going to walk the narrow road and teach it to others, we must first be people of prayer and encourage others into it as well. I am not talking about praying an Our Father a day. I am saying stop and take some time to literally engage in speaking and hearing the word of God in our lives. This is a sine qua non of Catholic life. If we are not living this and teaching it then we are not properly preaching the words of the Church and of Christ. Jesus went off by himself and prayed. So, he knew how much prayer is an essential part of living the good life. In fact, if anyone had an excuse not to pray, it is Jesus because he already is the Son of God and the Second person of the Trinity but he prays daily.

If a priest teaches morality every Sunday in his homilies and is not teaching his parishioners about this aspect of prayer, he is misguiding his people. He preaches to them a moral lesson one finds anywhere including every corner of secular society. He tells them to focus on doing the right thing without the need to engage in any form of union with Christ. This way is too common on Sundays in the Catholic Church and is a message one can find on the tall billboard above the wide road.

The difference between someone who prays and seeks to live Catholic morality and one who is a moral person but does not pray is the difference between a moral pagan and a holy Catholic. Morality without any connection to Christ is not Catholicism, I do not know what it is but it is not Catholic.

I often teach my parishioners to remember paragraph 2098 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It teaches that prayer is an essential element to living the commandments. Therefore, as the Catechism teaches, living moral behavior starts with communication with Christ.

Encountering Christ

Remember, many lives changed when they encountered Christ, some for the better and some for the worse but no one who encountered Christ remained the same.

Those who changed for the better grew in the ability to live the morality Christ desired. Their encounter taught them a whole new way to understand who they were because of their communion with this itinerant preacher and the Father he obeyed. This new understanding changed their comportment in the light of Christ.

In fact, St. Catherine Emmerich taught that even the high priest’s servant whom Jesus healed at his arrest was so filled with joy in the aftermath of the encounter he too was never the same.

Others who also encountered Christ turned away from him and became worse. They embraced not the narrow road of deepening their friendship with Our Lord but the wide road of embracing the hardness and unforgiving nature of the law. They treated others as outsiders with condemnation and disapproval. They only treated themselves as they wanted to be treated. Take for example, the parable of the pharisee and the publican. The pharisee exalts himself while looking down on the publican. He treats him with condemnation while celebrating his own spiritual accomplishments. Jesus says he is praying to himself. He walks the wide road. The publican in his humility walks away justified by the Lord he worships and is on the narrow road toward union with him.

It is the latter who calls himself the sinner, it is the former who calls himself the saint. Jesus teaches us the pharisee has it backwards. He thought he was on the narrow road basing it on obedience to the letter of the law and not the spirit which is the point of the Golden Rule.

It is too easy and lazy frankly to interpret the narrow road and the wide road in terms of sin. It is better to teach them in terms of the Golden Rule, imitation of Christ and the transformation one encounters when one prays daily as did Jesus.

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