WEDNESDAY HOMILY: Humility is the Key to the Narrow Gate

The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought.

A humble and contrite heart is the key that opens the narrow gate.  Jesus Most Sacred Heart, source of all humility, contrition, grace, and mercy, prays and intercedes for you.  Next time you receive Jesus in holy communion.  Be still.  Know Jesus is God.  And allow Him to ask the Father for your salvation.

P>HYTHE, KENT, UK (Catholic Online) - Are you saved?

Ever been asked this?

What did you say?
Jesus said, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.  After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, 'Lord, open the door for us.'  He will say to you in reply, 'I do not know where you are from.'" (Luke 13:24-25)

In other words, "Do not presume you are saved."

St Paul did not presume that he knew how to pray.  He said, "We do not know how to pray as we ought" (Romans 8:26).  The apostle to the Gentiles, the super-apostle, to whom Christ appeared, friend of angels, scourge of demons, who raised up from the dead, cured deceases, stayed storms, who was "taken up to the third heaven."  This man, did not presume to know how to pray.

Do not presume that you know how to pray.

Do not presume that you are saved.

Do not presume that you are pleasing to God.

Do not presume
Allow God to be God.  He alone can pierce the intentions of the heart and scrutinize the movements of the soul.  He weighs all our words, thoughts, and actions.  Who can understand His greatness and who can be worth of His most magnificent works, or who can tell Him why He has created them? (Romans 9:20)  He is the judge.  You are not.

The good news for todays Gospel is freedom from assuming that you know anything at all, freedom from assuming you know the state of your soul, freedom from pride, and therefore freedom from the main obstacle to eternal life - you.

Spiritual pride is the theme this week in the Gospel.  Get rid of it.  It is the sin of satan and the angels, and the most hidden and insidious thing for spiritually-minded people.  It is so easy to get infected with this disease.

Do you go to Mass?  Or as the presumers in the Gospel said, "We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets."  And this was not enough.  It isn't enough just to go through the motions of the saving Liturgy of the Church.  It isn't enough to listen to the teachings of the Master.  You must also bear fruit in your lives.  How?

Pray.
True prayer, as St Paul implies in the first reading is to humble yourself before God, and allow the Spirit to intercede in you in groanings too deep for words.  It is to say, "I am not God.  I do not know how to pray.  Lord, Be God.  Be Lord of my life.  Take control of my desire to control something even as deep as my own spirit and my own destiny."  Let go.  Let God.

A humble and contrite heart is the key that opens the narrow gate.  Jesus Most Sacred Heart, source of all humility, contrition, grace, and mercy, prays and intercedes for you.  Next time you receive Jesus in holy communion.  Be still.  Know Jesus is God.  And allow Him to ask the Father for your salvation.

Pope Francis said this week in a morning Mass homily, "Jesus has saved us.  He prayed this great prayer - His Sacrifice, His Life - to save us, to justify us.  We are justified thanks to him..Jesus has the wounds on His hands, on His feet, and on His side, and when He prays, He shows the Father the price of our justification, and He prays for us saying, 'Father, may this not be lost.'"

You go to Mass, but do you pray the Mass?  Do you allow the Spirit to pray within you, offering the Sacrifice of Jesus on your behalf, showing the Father His wounds?  Do you allow the Spirit to pray through you all day long, extending the holy Sacrifice of the Mass in your life, interceding for you and for all, presuming no ones salvation but desiring all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth?

May Our Lady, whose humility and contrite heart are a model for all Christians, free us from all faults, that presumption not rule us, that only God rule us.  May she who continually presents to the Father the blood of the Lamb on our behalf, intercede before the One Intercessor, Jesus, and may we thus be saved.

-----

Father Samuel Medley, SOLT, is a priest of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, and is based in Hythe, Kent, United Kingdom.  He speaks to groups around the world on Blessed Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.  Visit his homily blog http://medleyminute.blogspot.com or his blog on sexual ethics http

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'

Copyright 2021 - Distributed by Catholic Online