Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C (2025) - Fr James Baxter, OP

One of the least admirable traits of public figures is their ability to field dozens of questions from journalists without giving direct answers to any of them. “Answer the question you want, not the one you were asked”, goes the media-training maxim. Some people are brilliant at it. But it is an acquired skill that provokes no moral admiration. We would still prefer direct answers to direct questions.

It's a bit of a surprise, then, to read the Gospels and see how many times Jesus answers a different question to what he has been asked. Our Gospel passage today is one of the best examples there is. The question he is asked is concise: “Will there be only a few who are saved?” Could Jesus have given a yes or no answer? Could he have even given a figure, or a percentage of humanity? Possibly, but he does none of the above, instead talking at some length without answering the question, and at the end of the passage we are none the wiser.

Or are we?

It is quite true that, like a nimble politician, Jesus is answering the question he wants and not what he was asked. But unlike a nimble politician, he is not doing this to stay on message, nor to avoid getting caught out. He is always concerned with the salvation of the person in front of him: “Your faith has saved you”; “Go and sin no more”; “On this day you will be with me in paradise”. On this occasion, the person in front of him asks about salvation, and Jesus tells all those present (and us), what they need to know about salvation. And evidently what they need to know is not whether there will only be a few who are saved.

It's not hard to imagine why. Suppose we knew the answer to this question with some precision, that only, say, twenty percent of humanity will be saved, and the rest damned – separated from the happiness of God’s love for eternity. Would we assume we were in the twenty percent who are saved? Would that assumption be good for us? Or would we assume we were in the eighty percent who are lost, and so with a heavy heart turn from the way of discipleship? Presumption and despair – both sins against the virtue of hope – would result from an answer of this kind, and Jesus wants us to steer well clear of both. To those who would presume, he gives a warning: “there are those now first who will be last”. To those who would despair, he gives encouragement: “there are those now last who will be first”.

Between presumption and despair, there is hope, and it is an act of hope that Jesus encourages – “Try your best to enter by the narrow door.” He does not say, “Try your best to be among the saved.” That could lead to equating salvation with belonging to a particular group. But what the saved have in common is that they enter by the narrow door, Jesus – the door of the sheep (Jn 10:7, 9) who is (as we quote in our Gospel acclamation today), “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6).

What does it mean to enter the narrow door? It means all that Jesus himself encourages us to be and to do: to follow him as his disciple; to hear his words and do them; to let his words abide in us; to repent of sin and be baptised; to pray constantly and not lose heart. That is only some of what it means. We could multiply the exhortations and the parables that display the Christian life for us. They are as demanding as they are familiar. Committed Christians have read and heard words like “Take up your cross and follow me” thousands of times. They might be able to give a good explanation of what those words mean. Living them, though – that is a different matter. That is where entering the door happens. It is not standing back and admiring it, it is not pointing other people towards it, it is not describing its dimensions. It is the everyday, costly, non-glamourous life of Christian discipleship.

Fr James Baxter, OP is the Parish Priest of Broadway, Glebe, and Pyrmont, New South Wales.