Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus passed through towns and villages teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem.
Someone asked him, lord, will only a few people be saved?
He answered them, 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 he will 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.
And you will say, we ate and drank in your company, and you taught in our streets.
Then he will say to you, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers.
And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God, and you yourselves cast out.
And people will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.
For behold, some who are last will be first, and some who are first will be last.
The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I had an event in my life that helped me, at least I think, to understand what Jesus is trying to share with us in this gospel.
And it happened in the fall of 1999 when I had a chance to go to the Holy Land.
And the way our tour was set up is we moved through all the regions we wanted to see. And the last two days were when we finally got to the city of Jerusalem.
And in fact, on our bus, I think we sang something like 50 times. Jerusalem, my destiny, which still to this day, when I hear it, I start twitching a little bit.
I can't deal with it anymore.
But when we got there, we first stopped at a hill up above the city so you could see it all before you remembering that the Old City is fairly small and it's a walled city.
And then we drove down and went to the place we were staying. And the place we were staying was right outside of the walls of the Old City.
Now, throughout this trip, there would be points in time when we'd get to a new place where either somebody from the hotel or somebody from the tour company would give us some basic instructions. We'd take our stuff to our rooms and come back down 20 minutes later, and they would give us some instruction.
Well, I've never been one to take instruction well.
So I finally stopped even going to that little talk and just did my own thing. And I was so excited to be there before this ancient city that I skipped the talk and decided I was going to go right away on my own and explore a little bit.
Well, it was a little challenging because I went to the nearest gate going into the old city through the walls, and it happened to be when a gigantic mass of people were going through there.
And we were crammed together, literally elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder, moving through, and we. It seemed like there is no way that this gigantic mass of humanity is going to get through this narrow opening in the walls of the city.
But that's because I come from somewhere where big crowds like that typically do not happen. But these folks live with it every single day.
And surprisingly enough, we squirm through the walls in quite a quick fashion.
And what that taught me a little bit as I think where this gospel is pushing us, that we get through that narrow gate, when we do it together, it's not about our individual selves pushing through. It's about all of us, the whole body of Christ, the whole church, striving to enter through that narrow gate. So when one of us is strong, we help another.
When we are weak, others help help us.
And that's how we get through.
Well, there's a second part to this story, and it reinforced it for me, and that is as I wandered through the streets of the old city, I hadn't realized that at a certain period of time I can't remember, I think it was six o', clock, everything shuts down.
And so these streets are almost like going through caves, these old shops and stuff, and they pull these giant steel doors down, and all of a sudden, here I am, there's nobody around me, and I'm stuck in this rat maze that is these old streets.
And I started to walk, trying to find my way out, and the only people I saw were carrying automatic weapons. And I really didn't want to bother them too much, so I kept walking and I walked and I walked and I backtracked. And all of a sudden I found a gate going out of the city.
And I walked through very easily, but I walked out into a place I have never been before, had never seen before, and it just so happened to be a cemetery.
And so my pulse rate went up a little bit and I started to get a little bit of a panic attack because I had no clue how to get back to where I was staying.
And as I walked down through this cemetery, down to the ring road that goes around the old city, I saw the lights of a taxicab coming. And I must have looked like I was about ready to get mugged, because I ran out in the road and I'm going like this.
And the taxi came over, and one guy looked at me and said, what do you need? I said, can you take me back to the name of the hotel that we were at? Yeah, sure. And it was one turn, and there we were.
But what I learned from that is kind of connected to the first part, that when I am lost, when I don't know where I'm going, when I'm struggling, it's always a good idea to ask for the help of another, because others can help us. And that's really the definition of what it means to be church, that we help others when they need help and others help us when we need help.
