The Soil of the Cross

In the soil of the Cross
The tree of life was planted
it spread its branches of salvation
extending to the wearied hearts of men.

In the soil of the Cross
mans sins are forgiven
as the saviors blood is drawn
for all our indignation

In the soil of the Cross
a new foundation is fertile
as the water from His side
brings forth the fruit of trial 

In the soil of the Cross
now must our hearts be buried
so that the roots of his great sacrifice
may restore our true paradise


By Father Jacob Bertrand

The Triumph of the Cross is in My Heart

When first thing in the morning I turn to prayer
Where my soul is torn open by the beauty of Your love
While Your presence is impressed on my wounded being
The triumph of the Cross is in my heart

When celebrating Your mysteries at Mass
Where your death and Resurrection is made present
While I receive you Body and Blood
The triumph of the Cross is in my heart

When I pray to the pierced soul of my Mother
Where the Word of God was conceived
While your will and hers became one
The triumph of the Cross is in my heart

When I read the stories about Your Martyr’s
Where a sprout of Your well spring of love is born
While they laid down their life for love of You
The triumph of the Cross is in my heart

When I face my struggles and hardships
Where my heart is tested as though through fire
While unto Your likeness my whole being is made
The triumph of the Cross is in my heart 


By Father Jacob Bertrand

Walking Through the Rain

I take this journey walking through the rain
Each step I take makes my heart grow humble
Can I bear this path, ripe with sacred pain?

It’s time to start on this dangerous campaign
Clouds start to form and skies sound their rumble
I take this journey walking through the rain

I know not, what lies past this rough terrain
Struggles I suffer, cause me to stumble
Can I bear this path, ripe with sacred pain?

The storms build up, what shall my soul obtain?
Eternal bliss or is God just mumble
I take this journey walking through the rain

For enduring this strife may God ordain
My life to saint-hood, my heart will tremble
Can I bear this path, ripe with sacred pain?

For one Easter ago, Christ did unchain
His great example, my heart resemble
I take this journey walking through the rain
I will bear this path, ripe with sacred pain.


By Father Jacob Bertrand

Journal Entry 9-26-10

Prayer should never begin with our requests. The Lord already knows our needs when we enter into prayer and rarely do we truly know our needs. We know our desires, but how difficult it is for even the most advanced person of prayer to sift through and find their true needs and separate them out from their desires.

The Lord is like an expert jeweler who can tell when a diamond is really a diamond and when it is fake with just a glance. So let the expert gaze on you in prayer and pick out the diamonds so that he can use them to make a beautiful arrangement of that which most truly identifies you in the depths of your soul. 

For to our Lord and savior your needs are more valuable to him than the most precious of diamonds. They are what the Lord longs to adorn himself with. Thus, he places them on his crown of thorns and becomes the king of your heart, which he yearns to be.

The Cold Winter Night

The Cold Winter Night

Cool air whisps through the silence
Far off lights speckle in the distance
But cannot penetrate the thickness of the dark
Here in this cold winter night

The human eye cannot pick up shadows
The voice shouts to the heavens
But is only a muted whisper
Here in this cold winter night

Numb fingers reach shakingly through the dark
Wanting to find what is about
But all you can feel is yourself alone
Here in this cold winter night

A small flame flickers with haste
It’s warmth seemingly overcome by the chill of the wind
But, stay close, for it’s all that you have and all that you can trust
Here in this cold winter night


By Father Jacob Bertrand

3, If you seek Amy, and Sometimes ...

I came across this new music video by Britney Spears '3' and I had to stop watching and just listen to the lyrics for obvious reasons, but anyways, the lyrics blew me away and it made me think back to her son 'Sometimes' from much earlier on. 

And I just wondered how a person could produce a song like 'sometimes', which is a decent song about love, and then now produce this song called '3'. Sometimes I think the artists more often nowadays aren't really portraying how they feel in their music as much as they did before, but just what the producers want them to portray and unfortunately their lack of self-esteem maybe, I don't pretend to know what motivates these decisions (but something does), or maybe their drive to just make as much money as they can, or whatever, they just go along with it. 

Listen to the lyrics and notice the difference in how they talk about love, sex, and relationships comparatively. I'm not commenting on Britney Spears specifically but just in general intrigued by how drastically different love is portrayed in these two songs from the same artist within 5 or 6 years of each other ... I think. Then also listen to "If you seek Amy". Particularly notice the contrast of the portrayal of the double life at the end. No one really wants to live like that. 

It seems like you can tell that the person who sings the song 'sometimes' is not the same person that sings these other songs. Something is hurt there, something is off, not right, broken, and needs healing. And again this is something more characteristic of the culture and is not an attempt to make a specific judgment on Britney.

Early Christians tried for celebrating Sunday Eucharist

This text is from the "Acta Saturnini" and is a copy of a trial against two Christians named Emeritus and Felix for celebrating Sunday Eucharist ... have you been to Sunday Eucharist lately? 

Turning towards Emeritus, the Proconsul asked: “Were meetings, forbidden by the decrees of the Emperor, held in your house?" 

Emeritus, full of the Holy Spirit, said: “In my house we celebrated the Sunday Eucharist.” 

And the other asked: “Why did you allow them to enter?” 

He replied: “Because they are my brothers and I cannot stop them.” 

The Proconsul replied: “You had the responsibility to stop them” 

And he said: “I could not because we are Christians and we cannot be without the Sunday Eucharist." 

The Proconsul then turned to Felix: “Do not tell us if you are a Christian. Respond only if you participated in that meeting.” 

But Felix responded: “As if the Christian can exist without the Sunday Eucharist or the Sunday Eucharist can be celebrated without the Christian! Don’t you know that the Christian finds his foundation in the Sunday Eucharist and the Sunday Eucharist in the Christian such that one cannot exist without the other? When you hear the name Christian, you know that he joins his brother before the Lord and, when you hear one speaking about a gathering, you recognize in that the name Christian. We have celebrated the gathering with great solemnity and we will always gather for the Sunday Eucharist and for reading the Scriptures of the Lord.”

While Reaching Through the Dark

My hand hovers in the air
Slightly shaking from left to right
Hoping to find something to grasp onto
While reaching through the dark

Light from lamp’s help me to see
My eyes can pick up all the details
Yet all is black in a place where light does not shine
While reaching through the dark

But I cannot see light itself
I seek and strive and scrunch my eyes
This is the darkness of the light
While reaching through the dark

All my senses fail me now
Nothing remains to set my feet upon
Except the comfort of muttering “I trust”
While reaching through the dark


By Father Jacob Bertrand

Whispering Silently

The silence grows thick inside
Outside the noise clamors it’s messy tune
But inside a sweet hum lulls me to sleep
Whispering silently, tenderly, I am your rest

Faithfully I wonder at the dark
Unable to know what taps in the night
But inside a sweet hum tells me to trust
Whispering silently, tenderly, I am your rest

I spend myself fully through service
I’m drained of energy and lacking desire
But inside a sweet hum urges me on
Whispering silently, tenderly, I am your rest

A wound of sweet love purges me deep
No knowledge if its source, have I, to trust
But inside a sweet hum directs my course
Whispering silently, tenderly, I am you rest


-Father Jacob Bertrand

Journal Entry 10-13-2009 (Part II)

When we receive the Eucharist there is a soul sized tunnel that leads to the other side of the veil, which connects us to the shadowed realities. So although our physical senses cannot perceive it we are tasting heaven. 

Our tongues taste bread, but our souls taste heaven. The more in-tune we are with our souls the more we will perceive the shadows of heaven veiled by earth. 

Those of us who want to see heaven expect God to take us up high into some alternate reality. What we don't realize, as the we search the skies for a sign, is that God has already come down to earth and he is inviting us to dig down into the earthly realm, deep enough into our own bodies to our souls, to find the spiritual seeds of his Kingdom, the kingdom of Heaven. 

If only we recognized how many seeds lay below the soil of our earthly existence we would excavate our earthly experiences, we would search the caverns of soul, everyday and be in complete awe of how present God's grace is in our lives and as Benedict XVI says, "God's grace is God himself". 

Journal Entry - 10-13-2009 (Part I)

The Eucharist is a veil, through which our bodily senses cannot pierce or get through. It is a veil, which separates heaven and earth and only the spirit illumined by faith can shine on the veil to see clearly the shadowed realities behind it. 

When our bodies, when our flesh, becomes one with our spirit, that is, when all our longings and desires are united to that deep thirst of our souls for God's love we further yearn to see this veil ripped down so that the passively perceptible shadows of heaven dancing behind the veil become actively engaged by our whole person, body, soul, and mind. 

The spiritual shadows veiled by the Eucharist are the images, or the image, of ourselves that was never lost by original sin, but once the veil is torn our likeness to God, which was lost by original sin, will be revealed, that is to say, our likeness to the body and blood of Jesus Christ, or our likeness to the Eucharist. 

This means, as many have noted before, when we receive the Eucharist, we are becoming Eucharist, becoming 'like' Jesus Christ. 

You become what you receive.

From the Hill

From the hill, through the valley, to the mountain … 
A message of peace comes to the earth;
Make room for your King in your hearts, my children
For from here His kingdom of peace will reign forever. 

From the hill, through the valley, to the mountain … 
A message of prayer reaches to the heart;
The cornerstone of your holiness is your prayer life
And from this foundation the Lord will build you up

From the hill, through the valley, to the mountain … 
A message of providence strikes the mind;
Do not trust in yourself, but in the providence of my Son
For he can accomplish more than you even know how to ask for

From the hill, through the valley, to the mountain … 
A message of love beckons to the will;
It is time to change your life, so pick up His cross of love
And walk from my humble hill, through your violent valley to his majestic mountain


-Father Jacob Bertrand

Homily - 24th Weekend in Ordinary Time

My dear friends God is essentially mysterious, His ways are not our ways, what he does, how he behaves, how he acts, when we get down to it truly confounds us. His whole way of thinking is on an entirely different level, which, often times, strikes a dissonant chord in our hearts and can kind of rub against the grain of how we think it is appropriate to behave or act.

When it comes down to it, put rather simply, according to our thoughts God is out of His mind. According to our way of thinking God does not understand the importance of being practical. When compared to our logic God is, so to speak, out of his mind. We see this on perfect display in our Gospel reading today. Jesus has decided to tell a trio of parables to the crowd that has gathered to listen to Him. These parables teach us through analogy about how God acts and thinks. In the first one we hear of this good shepherd figure whom leaves the 99 in search of the one. Well, hold on a second, really think this through, is that necessarily the best way to approach the situation? To put at risk the other 99 for the sake of this one disobedient, wandering sheep? In the second parable our Lord tells us about a woman who frantically turns over her house looking for one coin. Note, that the Greek word used for coin here denotes a very small coin. So she spends hours looking through the house for a penny. Is that practical? Does that really jive with how we would approach a lost coin? And then after finding the coin she wants to throw a party? Could you imagine receiving a phone call to come over to party, sure yea what’s the celebration for? Well my penny was lost but now it’s found, come on over. You’d think she’s nuts! Then we have the third parable, that of the Prodigal Son. The father in the story upon seeing his son return from, who first insulted him by asking for his inheritance before his dad dies, and then squandered it all on a life of dissipation, the father runs out to meet him, embraces him, gives him a ring and a robe symbols that denote that he still belongs to this family and then proceeds to slaughter the fatted calf for a party. What? No punishment? No giving him what is due for his actions? Where’s the justice in that? You see my friends what we have here is full blown proof that according to our way of thinking God is simply out of his mind.

This means then that we need to figure out how to appreciate God’s ways in our lives and in order to do so we have to kind of re-wire ourselves. Because His thoughts are so far above our thoughts we have to reconfigure our own processes in order for this to make sense. Our interior way of thinking needs to be re-wired. Picture a bunch of wires making up a circuit that is trying to bring electricity to a light bulb. Unless and until the current passes through them no light will get to that bulb. We are those wires and God is the current trying to pass through. We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, and produce the Light of the World. But if we are not configured in accordance with the current we will never be able to transmit the light in its proper way and so sometimes we give up and refuse to be used and allow darkness to spread. Time passes the wires get crusty, older, and tangled. Now it’s a confusing mess and a life with God and the Church can see near impossible. St. Paul would have felt the same way when he said: “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and arrogant, but (he continues) I have been mercifully treated.” The Psalmist today shares the same desire as he prays: “A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.” Renewal, re-wire, re-configure, clean heart, receive God’s mercy, however you want to put it we need to surrender more readily to God’s logic in order to appreciate how deeply he loves us.

Like the good shepherd chasing one lonely sheep, the crazy lady turning over furniture for a penny, the father running down the hill to meet his Son so too does the compassion of God the Father go to such extremes for each and everyone of us.

God’s love mysteriously for some reason seeks out us sinners and desires to encounter us. In the moment when we come to our senses like the prodigal son and initiate a return to our Heavenly Father he shows us a compassion that is both radically immediate and radically intimate.

Notice how in the parable of the Prodigal Son the father ‘caught sight of the son’ while he was still far off. The moment we turn just the tiniest bit towards God the Father; he catches sight of us. Every Sunday when we walk through the doors of the Church to come and worship Him; he catches sight of us. When our knees hit the pew; he catches sight of us. When we pray, when we stop, take a second to think of him, when we do anything at any moment that puts God first in our lives; immediately he catches sight of us and is filled with intimate compassion. Why does the Lord catch sight of us?  … Because He never stops looking!

In the parable the father catches sight of his son while he’s still a long way off precisely because everyday he would sit at the window and wait, looking out on the horizon for the smallest sign that his son was coming home. So too does God the Father wait, wait, and wait, for the smallest sign that you his daughter or you his son is coming towards him.

In a few moments God will catch sight of you as you approach His sanctuary to receive the Eucharist. His gaze will fix upon you with gratitude that you have accepted his invitation to come to the Eucharistic feast for which the Lamb of God was slaughtered on your behalf. As you receive his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist, the God who is essentially mysterious, beyond all our ways and our thoughts, will pour his mercy and love over your heart renewing it and giving it the strength to be steadfast in faith. In this encounter with the compassion of God the Father you will be empowered to bring the same love that has won you over to all those you come into contact with this week. 

Homily - 22nd Sunday of Ordinary TIme

Readings:

Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29

Psalm 68

Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a

Luke 14:1, 7-14

______________________________________

My dear friends the message from our Gospel today could not be any more clear, be humble. This event in Jesus’ life paints a scene, which, in many respects, summarizes the entire life of Jesus, who after his humble death on the cross was raised to his throne in heaven; “the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” You can just imagine this vivid and lively party going on and it’s at the time to move from the social cocktail hour to the dinner table. Jesus is there observing the actions of everyone carefully and you can just kind of see his wheels turning as a great opportunity to teach about humility unfolds. It would be fair to say that humility is one of Jesus’ favorite virtues and so we should be attentive today to what humility is all about. Why is humility important? Why does it come up all over the scriptures, just think about how many times Jesus shows a divine preference for the humble; ‘the sick over the healthy, those who lack over those who have, the oafish fisherman as Apostles rather than the sophisticated scribes, the nerds to the in-crowd, the sinner to the self-righteous; why is humility so prized by Jesus?’

Ultimately, humility puts us in a posture that allows us to be receptive to the divine life of God. As St. Augustine once observed, “If you ask me what are the ways to God, I would tell you the first is humility, the second is humility and the third is humility …”. Humility puts us in the right place to receive eternal life. If you’ve ever studied European history you might recall the country of Austria, which for a period of time held a very strong empire. When the king of the Royal Family from Austria passes away there is a special ritual used before the funeral. When the casket reaches the doors of the Church, the guard would knock and a priest would ask: “Who desires admission here?” The guard would respond: “His apostolic majesty, the Emperor.” The priest would answer: “I do not know him.” The guard would knock a second time and announce the deceased to be the highest emperor. Again, the response from the priest was, “I do not know him.” Finally, a third knock would provoke the same question from the priest: “Who desires admission here?” Then the answer would be: “The deceased is a poor sinner, your brother!” Then the door of the church would be opened. In the end, it will not be our great achievements in life that prepare us to receive God’s blessings but rather our humble disposition before the Lord.

So that sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Be humble, receive heaven. My dear friends we all know from our own experience that humility doesn’t come as easily as we would like it to. This is part of the reason why Jesus preached it so much, because being humble is difficult. In our culture today I want to identify for you three major enemies that make it difficult to live a humble life. Once we know the enemy its always easier to fight! Pride, Pragmatism, and Personal Rights.

Public enemy number one to humility … pride. Pride is the exact opposite of humility. Whereas humility creates space for God and others, pride fills up all space with yours truly. Pridefulness is an over exaltation of human ability leaving no wiggle room for grace to break into our lives. Remember our Gospel from today, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted”. Declare war on pride in your own life for it is always better to humble ourselves than to be humbled by another.

Pragmatism. In the United States we are a very pragmatic people, that means, we are rather practical, sensible and realistic, we know how to get things done, we are task-oriented and feel everything is possible through sweat, work, and effort; we are pragmatic. Everyday I have my to-do list of items and I love checking them off knowing that I got things done. But if I were to exaggerate that list too much, if I stressed too much in my life over getting things done by my effort and will I will soon stifle humility in my life. Yes, God wants our work and our effort but as remind Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house in vain does the laborer build.”  Arch Bishop Dolan of New York once said, (quote) “We are not defined by what we do, how much we earn or produce, or what we achieve, but by who we are, and we are usually closest to God when we are weakest, emptiest, and lowest.” So don’t be afraid to admit you can’t do everything on your to-do lists, to do so takes humility.

Finally, the third enemy, personal rights. In the United States we are grateful for the gift of personal rights that offers us so many freedoms that others do not enjoy and lets not forget that the Church through out the centuries has championed for human rights and rightly so for our leader, Jesus Christ, was the world’s most forceful defender of such. When I say that personal rights are an enemy to humility I do not speak of this American treasure but rather about that attitude, that disordered attitude, that leads us to believe we need to get our due, that we are owed something and deserve special treatment because of who we are, what we’ve done, or what has happened to us. This train of thought only leads one to feel sorry for themselves; to cower over and lick their own wounds. But humility enables us to admit that in the long run we don’t deserve anything at all and yet we have a God who has been so generous to give us life and has given us everything we could want from this life through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Okay, so we know humility’s important, it helps us get to God. We know what enemies to fend off to create a healthy environment in our hearts, but how do we water humility so that it really takes root and grows in our life? How do we, so to speak, exercise our humility muscles?

I think we need to remember that humility is a chosen virtue … what I mean by that is we have to actively consent to living in a humble way before the opportunity to be humble comes. Humility doesn’t come in individual acts, but rather is a disposition towards how we handle situations in our lives. Thus, we must actively choose to put ourselves in a humble attitude. When I was beginning my third year of seminary in Rome the whole issue of humility really came to a head for me. I was on silent retreat with a fantastic spiritual director who was helping me move deeper into my heart. In doing so together we encountered that inside of me there was a real deep temptation of spiritual pride, that of looking down upon others because they did not dedicate their lives to Christ as much as I thought they should. After one of our meetings my spiritual director asked me a random question, “Does the name Eric mean anything to you?” I stopped in utter surprise. He continued, “The Lord keeps asking me to pray for Eric.” As I looked at him with utter disbelief I told him that Eric is the name I took at confirmation. There was no way he knew that name. I continued to tell him that the Holy Spirit would probably ask you to pray for Eric during this time, because while I am very proud to have the name Jacob I have been ashamed that I chose Eric as my confirmation name and not some more well known saint, more heroic, or what have you. So my spiritual director said when I pray today to pray as if I was Eric as a way to stir up in my heart a more humble disposition. Since then if ever I feel a lack of humility I will pray as Eric instead of Jacob. Humility is a virtue we grow in by first choosing to actively live it out before the opportunity to be humble comes.

In that humility I was able to become more myself. I was free to accept who I truly was rather than grasp at what I wanted to make myself out to be. This is the primary gift of a life of humility here on earth it frees us from the need or compulsion to wear a mask and pretend to be someone else we are not. Humility puts us in a posture that allows us to be the true sons and daughters of God the Father we are, which is the blessing he gave us in Baptism and wishes to bring to fulfillment at the end of our lives.

Keep in mind, my dear friends, humility is not a microwavable virtue, put it in, push the button and its ready to go in two minutes. It is more like a crock-pot, it takes time, you have to let it brew, stew, be seasoned, mellowed, for hours, then its good to go. Humility cooks in the crock pot of silent prayer before the Lord, especially before the Eucharist in adoration. Sometime this week take an extra half hour out of your schedule and come here to the Church and pray before the Eucharist, or come on Friday for Eucharistic Adoration to season that virtue of humility.

In the more immediate moment here at the Mass prepare your heart well to receive your God in the Eucharist today. Listen to the prayers over the Eucharist with attentiveness. Before you receive Jesus in the Eucharist you bow your head as an act of humility, and when you receive our Lord in your hands or on your tongue let those words you spoke just moments before echo in your heart, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive but only say the word and I shall be healed.” 

Homily - 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: 

Isaiah 66:18-21

Psalm 117:1, 2

Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13

Luke 13:22-30

We have in our Gospel today a rather straightforward question. A man comes up to Jesus and asks him, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” What a good question. Isn’t it a question we’ve maybe at least at some point in our lives wanted to ask God, how many will really be saved? And here in the Gospel they were wondering the same thing. How man will be saved? A few? A thousand? A million? 144,000? Notice how our Lord when he responds to this man does not report a number, rather he shifts the focus of the question from being about everybody else to being about the individual asking the question: “You strive to enter through the narrow gate …” What a great answer … If we ask Jesus How many will be saved? Or even just will I be saved? We can see his answer already … “You strive to enter through the narrow gate.” So lets look at this narrow gate, what is it made up of? How do we strive to enter through it? I want to propose a triple-path to help us get to and enter through the narrow gate: 1) the path of grace 2) the path of virtue 3) the path of enduring suffering well.

Anyone who wants to enter through the narrow gate must first receive grace. To pass through the narrow gate is impossible for man alone and so he needs the grace of God. Grace enables us to enter through the narrow gate. If one were to look among all the other religions of the world you would discover that the doctrine of grace is unique to Christianity. Grace means that God acts first, that he has come to us to help us attain eternal life. A good definition of grace then is Calvary, that is, the mount upon which the Cross of our Lord was planted. Grace = Calvary. For when you look upon the limp body of our Lord Jesus breathing his last for our sins you see a reservoir of grace that is filled to the brim and flowing over. It’s there in the heart of Jesus where all the grace we need to enter the narrow gate, to gain eternal life, is kept. How does it get to us? Remember that after our Lord breathed his last his side was pierced with a lance and what poured out was blood and water. In our Catholic faith the water is a sign of Baptism and the Blood is a sign of the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of our Lord. So what gets the grace from that heart to this heart? From that heart to your heart? The sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist. Imagine a long pipe connected to that wounded side of our Lord, that pipe reaches across centuries and millennium to bring the grace that flows from his wounded heart, wounded out of love for us, to us here in the year 2010. That is exactly what the sacraments do. They connect the event of Calvary to your very own life today. Without this grace we would not even know where to begin in trying to enter through the narrow gate.

The second path to and through the Narrow Gate is virtue. Once we have received grace we have to maintain it and we do that with a life of virtue. Our virtuous lives enable us to keep God’s grace actively working in our lives. Grace is sustained by growing in virtue. What is virtue? Virtue is a good habit bearing on our activity and we form good habits by discipline. Virtue exists, by the way, both for the natural life and the supernatural life. To be good at anything, like basketball, baseball, football, golf, dancing, gymnastics, swimming, chess, one needs to discipline themselves with good habits so that they can perform. Since football season is coming up lets take that as our example. Everyone knows that preseason is a time to get in shape; to pump, pump, pump it up. But if in the off season you haven’t been keeping good habits like exercising daily, eating well, and taking care of your body it is going to be harder to get into top shape come time for regular season. You have to discipline yourself, form good habits, so that you can achieve your goals. Just as there are disciplines in training for football, like exercising, weight lifting, drills that enable a player to throw the ball, catch the ball, juke, block, or tackle better. So too there are disciplines in the spiritual life, like prayer, coming to Mass, going to confession, devotions, spiritual reading, studying the teachings of the Church, these are all disciplines that enable a Christian to grow in virtue, virtues like living a more pure and chaste life, exercising patience with those who frustrate us, being more truthful with those we love, having more faith in God when times are difficult, and loving even those who hate us. Yes, grace might give you a free gym pass, so to speak, but if you don’t take the time to go to the spiritual gym of your life and use the weights and techniques of the spiritual life, you won’t have a chance at walking through that narrow gate come game time. The grace that pours into our lives from the cross must be maintained, sustained, and activated by a virtuous life.

Finally, striving to enter through the narrow gate includes the ability to suffer well. A life of grace and of virtue will bring with it certain suffering. We would not be able to walk through the narrow gate without enduring at least just a little bit of suffering. Why does suffering have to be part of God’s plan we might wonder? Let’s be clear when Jesus came to earth he didn’t come and say, “Hey everyone, I have good news, suffer!” No … rather, he found us in suffering, in our strife and our struggle, and he chose to enter into that all of it, to the greatest degree possible, so that something good might come of it, namely so that salvation might come of it. Our Lord’s suffering on the cross has turned the worst evil of our life, our own suffering, strife, and struggles, to be the source of the greatest good of our life, our salvation. Thus, here we see that the narrow gate of heaven that we want to walk through is closely connected with suffering well.

Our second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews can comfort us about this whole reality of the narrow gate involving difficulties, the author writes, (quote) “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.” Here that athletic vocabulary echoing a bit. Discipline. Training. The struggle that comes from disciplining ourselves, the strife of leaving behind our old lives, the suffering because others think we’re weird for loving Jesus, and the sadness of turning away from the things of the world or the things in our own life that we have tried previously to fill ourselves up with, turning from all that, to God and asking him to fill us up with his grace seems a cause not for joy but for pain. But in truth this is all leading us the to peaceful fruit of righteousness so that we may, with the grace of God and virtuous life, “make straight paths for (our) feet” through the narrow gate of heaven.

Why not make the gate wider? Why does it have to be narrow? In the Gospel of John chapter 10 verse 9, not our reading from today, our Lord says this; (quote) “I am the gate and whoever enters through me will be saved.” Connect that statement with our Gospel today in your mind. Think about it … the gate is narrow precisely because the gate is Jesus, and so to enter through the narrow gate ultimately means conformity to the very person of Jesus Christ, to live a life of grace with Jesus, to follow in the wake of the many virtues he exhibited in his earthly life, and to participate with him in the suffering he endured on Calvary. By the way, that’s why he will be able to recognize us when we come and knock on the door, because we have been conformed to him, we have been likened to his own person. If we do this we will have no need to worry that we might have to hear those most horrifying words that were spoken in the parable today to the one who knocked on the door, “I do not know you.”

So how many will be saved? 10, do I hear 20, 50, one million, 25%, no come on, turn away from this pointless question, rather you strive to enter through the narrow gate by living a life with Jesus himself.