Sunday Homily, 24 August 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

It’s wonderful to be back home and to be with you.  I’ve missed you all.  In July, I had a really nice, restful holiday with our Sydney community.  And I’m just back this week from giving a retreat to our friars in Washington.  They’re a great community.  Thank God, the retreat talks were well received in the main: eleven talks in six days is no small undertaking, but I was generously received and kindly listened to.  We looked at the jubilee theme of hope in the letter to the Romans.  If there’s a single takeaway, it’s this: now that God has made it possible for us to live with him forever, we’re responsible for keeping up our hope in him.  It's good to have been away; it's great to be home.

The question the Lord is asked is something of a trap.  If he answers, “Yes, not many will be saved,” then people could look at themselves and conclude that heaven is evading them.  Then they would descend into hopelessness with a pattern of life to follow.  If the Lord answers, “No, many in fact will be saved,” then people might conclude that heaven is in the bag for them.  Then they too would descend into hopelessness with a pattern of life to follow.  So, whatever answer the Lord would give to the binary question, “Will only a few be saved?”, would lead to widespread self-exclusion from heaven, whether because of misplaced humility or foolish presumption.

The strange thing about the trap that this question is, is that it’s a trap we set for ourselves.  The Lord gives his reply, which we’ll come to in a moment.  But the trap is ours, and we have to escape it with the Lord’s help.

It’s quite normal to want feedback, affirmation, redirection about what we’re getting up to.  We have examinations at school and university, and annual reviews at work.  There are medical tests and aged care assessments.  Even traffic cameras and political elections can show how things are going.  This is how we operate.  We subject ourselves to review so that we’ll make improvements: some will be steadily made; others more suddenly so.  There’s a part of us which needs and even likes these reviews because we’re changing all the time.  We’re not angels nor are we immutable objects; we’re living, breathing creatures.  For us, to live is to change.

So, we might think we want a spiritual assessment as well.  “Will only a few be saved?” is almost “Will I be saved?” or “Will my family be OK in the end?”

But the truth is, we ought not to know about our final end just yet, because we can still turn things around for ourselves.  We can do better, starting right now.  Receiving either of the answers to the binary question about salvation would so alter our worldview as to make life insufferable for us.  If I knew my eternal destiny, my daily life would be pointless, joyless, hopeless.

So, the Lord in his merciful wisdom doesn’t answer the question as it is put to him.  Instead, he offers us substantial encouragement.  He tells us to enter by the narrow door; he is the narrow door.  There’s just one way into heaven, and that’s Christ.  Only the Son of God has the right to leave and to enter heaven, as he did when he was born one of us, died our death, and rose again. When we enter heaven, please God, it will be because the Father recognises his Son in us.

“Strive to enter by the narrow door” means to live like Christ lived.  This isn’t the same as knowing Christ, or worse merely knowing about him.  It’s not a matter of acquaintance, familiarity, or proximity.  These things are insufficient when it comes to gaining entry into heaven.  Being Christ’s neighbours isn’t enough; we must be his guests, his friends, his servants, his allies.

The spiritual assessment doesn’t come from Christ in this instance; it’s ours to make ourselves.  We don’t need the Lord to reveal our final fate to recognise that we need to spend more time in quality prayer to him, to love and serve others more generously for him, to come to grips with true sorrow for sins to him, and to work more wisely for justice in him.  It’s true that those things aren’t going to make us the world’s winners.  But we’re not aiming for a podium on earth, but for a place in heaven.

So, keep up your hope.  You’re not out of the running.  Heaven may yet be yours.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest