6/26/2012 – Tuesday of 12th week in ordinary time - Matthew 7:6, 12-14

         Jesus today tells us to enter through the narrow gate, for the wide one is the one that leads us to destruction.  As I thought about this verse, I reflected up the criticism that our Church has been getting from the media and from the government recently.  It seems like in the eyes of the secular world, we Catholics can’t do anything right these days.  I read one article on a popular website that says that the Fortnight for Freedom that we are undertaking is a departure from the love that we in the Church should embody, and that by standing up for religious liberty in this way, that we are becoming a Church of the few rather than a Church for the many.  But, bringing God’s love to the world doesn’t mean that we are always politically correct.  Standing up for what we perceive to be the truth is not always easy and comfortable.  While we see so many in our society trying to go through the wide door, what sense does that make of the narrow door that Jesus mentions in today’s Gospel?  I think of what we are trying to do as a congregation here in Yazoo City.  We go out to the prisons each week when so many in our society try to forget that the prisoners even exist.  We visit the sick and the shut-ins.  We try to reach out to the children and the youth in a way that is relevant to them.  Sure, we could always do more, but there are only so many hours in the day as well.  We try to live out our faith as best we can, and that is always a huge challenge.

         I think all of us need to look into our hearts to see how we are living out the Gospel in a way that God is calling us to do so.  But if we believe that the Gospel of Life calls us to be against abortion and against capital punishment, that puts us out of line with our society as it tries to look for the easiest and most convenient way out.  If we say we define marriage between a man and a woman in our Church, it is not because we are lashing out at certain groups or individuals in society, but rather it is because we believe that that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman who are united before God in a special, holy way.  Standing up for the freedom to practice our faith may not be the politically correct thing to do; it may not be the easy way out; and it may not be the entrance through the wide door of our secular world.  But, for standing up for our rights to practice our faith, we do so because we believe it is the right thing to do.  Maybe it will come down to some of us priests and some of us lay Catholics going to prison because our society has turned so far away from Jesus and his teachings.  Maybe it will come down to that sooner rather than later.  That will be the price our generation will have to pay for living out our faith.  In the 1960s, it was the hippies and the flower children who were seen as counter-cultural & on the fringes of society.  Now the Catholic Church and the priests and the nuns are the ones who are counter-cultural, believe it or not.  My, how things change.