August 24 – 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
According to contemporary thinking, the word kindness can designate a thousand qualities, except for one: seriousness. And so it has become synonymous with acquiescence to error or wilful blindness to what needs to be corrected or warned against. But in God, kindness is something very different… In the Gospel for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, the kindness of the Divine Redeemer draws our attention to the serious and decisive moments that await us on the occasion of the particular and universal judgement.
The greater the height, the greater the fall. The higher one is on the path of holiness, the greater the risk of the slightest concession to temptation and sin. St. Teresa of Jesus saw the terrible place in hell to which she would go if she remained on the path of vanity and lukewarmness.1
Our Lord Jesus Christ makes it clear in the Gospel that the important thing is not whether the saved will be many or few, but to make every effort to be one of them. “Many will try to enter and will not succeed” (Lk 13:24) because – mystery of human infidelity! – not even those who ate and drank before the Redeemer and listened to His preaching (cf. Lk 13:26), in other words, who have participated in Holy Mass, will be recognized by Him if, by settling into their faults and always leaving it until later to change their lives, they fail to put into practice what they have received.
In fact, putting it off until it “gets dark” – the image of the master of the house who gets up to lock the door at nightfall (cf. Lk 13:25) – symbolizes the moment when Jesus will assume the position of Judge: it is the individual “night” – death – or the universal “night” – the end of history – after which the doors will be closed and the particular or final judgement will begin.
Those who, by stifling their conscience, have led a life of duplicity and hypocrisy will at first show surprise at God’s denial (cf. Lk 13:25-26). They will do this because they have so hardened their conscience that they are incapable of recognizing their own wickedness. This confirms a truth that is often forgotten: no one can profess the Faith and live contrary to it for long; soon they will create doctrines for themselves that justify their bad actions…
Through Baptism we have been accepted and loved by our Heavenly Father as His children, but in order to fulfil our mission we must allow ourselves to be corrected by Him. Such is His love for us that He has given us as our Mother and Advocate the One whom St. Augustine calls “the form of God.”2 If, sincerely renouncing our sins, defects and whims, we throw ourselves confidently into this “divine mould”, we will undoubtedly enter through the narrow door and will not hear from the Divine Judge the terrible sentence: “I do not know where you are from. Depart from Me, all you evildoers!” (Lk 13:27). ◊
Notes
1 Cf. ST. TERESA OF JESUS. Libro de la vida, c.XXXII, n.1-7.
2 ST. AUGUSTINE. Sermo 208, apud GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, OP, Réginald. La Madre del Salvador y nuestra vida interior. 3.ed. Buenos Aires: Desclée de Brouwer, 1954, p.279.
