Many from East and West
Our destiny in life is to be images of Christ, people who resemble him more and more. If we are open to the Spirit, he will help us to become more and more like Christ and he will pray in us.
For disciples of Christ, it is not enough to know about the Lord or to come to Mass to eat with the Lord or to read the Bible. As Jesus tells us in many ways throughout the Gospel, we must live as his disciples and put his word into practice. Otherwise, it is as if we did not know him and he does not know us.
Reading: Romans 8:26-30
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
Gospel: Luke 13:22-30
He went on teaching from town to village, village to town, but keeping on a steady course toward Jerusalem.
A bystander said, “Master, will only a few be saved?”
He said, “Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s salvation banquet just because you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood all your lives. Well, one day you’re going to be banging on the door, wanting to get in, but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying, ‘Sorry, you’re not on my guest list.’
“You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known you all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with his abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about me.’
“That’s when you’ll find yourselves out in the cold, strangers to grace. You’ll watch Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets march into God’s kingdom. You’ll watch outsiders stream in from east, west, north, and south and sit down at the table of God’s kingdom. And all the time you’ll be outside looking in—and wondering what happened. This is the Great Reversal: the last in line put at the head of the line, and the so-called first ending up last.”
Prayer
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we know that there are poor people
and that there are people suffering
from injustice and the hard-heartedness of others.
Do not allow us to remain indifferent to their plight
but give us the courage to share with the needy
and to be the voice of the voiceless.
Make our faith deep and committed,
that you may recognize us
as real brothers and sisters,
of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
