Entering through Jesus the Narrow Gate, 12th Tuesday (II), June 23, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
2 Kings 19:1-11.14-21.31-36, Ps 48, Mt 7:6.12-14

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• As we begin to approach the end of our annual 16-installment prayerful reexamination of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, the Master, begins to summarize for us what he has been revealing to us over the previous two weeks. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ Magna Carta of Christian morality, the way he wants to form us to live like him, with a holiness surpassing that of the Scribes and Pharisees and virtuous pagans. Tomorrow, if we didn’t have the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, he would use the image of becoming a good tree that bears good fruit. On Thursday, he will summarize with the image of building our life on the rock. Today he gives us three images.
• The first is to recognize the treasure he is giving us. He says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine.” His teaching is an extraordinary gift. It is the path to life. Just like we would never put diamonds in a toilet or priceless masterpieces in a doghouse, so we need to treasure his words and protect them within. We should never take them for granted. While we are obviously called to spread the faith and share Jesus and his teachings with others, we should at the same time do so with reverence for what we are transmitting. In the early Church, this passage was often used to refer to the Holy Eucharist. The Didache said, “Let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist except those baptized into the name of the Lord; for, as regards this, the Lord has said, ‘Give not that which is holy unto dogs.’” We need to treat every word that comes from God’s mouth in a similar way, treasuring it and not just throwing it away or giving it to others the way we could give food we cannot finish or don’t want to eat to salivating dogs at our lap. Jesus wants us to grasp that in sharing this gift with us, he is not throwing pearls before swine, but accentuating our dignity. He wants us to treasure both the gift and the recipient. That’s what he’s asking of us here in terms of the way we will live and transmit his words.
• The second image is what we call the Golden Rule. Jesus summarizes everything he has been teaching us in the update, the interiorization, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, as “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the Law and the Prophets.” Often it is said that the Golden Rule exists in many religions but that is false. God has given the seeds of the word to many over the course of the centuries, but it was always in some version of the “Silver Rule”: “Don’t do to others what you would not want them to do to you.” Jesus was far exceeding that here. He wants us to treat others as we would want to be treated. If we want to be loved, we love. If we want to be forgiven, we forgive. If we want to be thanked, we thank. If we want to be helped when we’re in need, we help. It translates everything from a principle of justice to one of love. St. John of the Cross would translate this principle as, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will draw love out.” “I must not harm,” is much different from “I must love.” Not to hurt others is quite possible for everyone; but to love others by the standard of the golden rule is something that requires God’s help, it requires the love of God within. To obey this command in short is to become a new person, to look at the world in a new way. It means to look at things the way Christ does, when he loves us first in the way he would have us love others. Christ ultimately calls us to what we might term the “platinum rule,” not just doing to others what we would hope they do to us, but loving others as he has first loved us.
• The third image helps us both to choose the path we will follow and to recognize that it is not the popular path. “Enter through the narrow gate,” Jesus says, “for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.” Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, he is indicating to us the narrow gate and the constricted road, but we need to strive, to agonize, to move from where we are and enter through it. Most don’t, Jesus implies. Most are on the broad road leading to perdition. Through his teaching, through our sharing it as a treasure with others as we would want others to share it with us, we seek to help others join us on the pilgrimage following in Jesus’ footsteps up that narrow path through the gates of the eternal Jerusalem.
• In the first reading, we see someone who lived by the wisdom of the law and the prophets, King Hezekiah of Judah, one of the few faithful descendants of King David. After King Sennacherib sent his emissaries to threaten him into submission, based on the way that he had already overrun the Kingdoms of Israel and Samaria, Hezekiah went to the Lord in prayer. He recognized the treasure he had in the Temple and in God’s presence and he wasn’t going to waste it. He sought to live by God’s way, even if it was not the way of worldly wisdom. He prayed and God heard his prayer, sending the Prophet Isaiah to confirm him in his trust in the Lord and then routing Sennacherib’s troops at night, such that Sennacherib, devastated, need to withdraw. Hezekiah shows us how to treasure prayer, to entrust ourselves to God, to follow him even and especially when it is hard.
• Today as we prepare to receive the holiest pearl of them all, the pearl of great price, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus wants to transform us on the inside to learn how to love others as he has loved us, laying down his life for us to save us as we would want to be saved and then transforming us to love others enough to cooperate with Jesus in their salvation. This is the path that leads to life — and we are grateful to be among the few who are here at the altar today.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel MT 7:6, 12-14

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine,
lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces.
“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.
This is the Law and the Prophets.“Enter through the narrow gate;
for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction,
and those who enter through it are many.
How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life.
And those who find it are few.”

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