Wednesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Our families afford us wonderful opportunities to practice Christian discipleship! Our family members constantly observe the extent to which we model God’s love and seek to follow Christ’s example. The home becomes a learning laboratory for relationships, indeed might I say that how we relate to people in general is forged in the fire of the nuclear family. Our relationships with family members both near and extended are truly foundational to all our relationships. Honestly, often our relationships with family members can be the most difficult. We struggle to understand each other, we rub each other the wrong way, differing opinions or worldviews lead to conflict, we push each other’s buttons, we take out our pain, frustration, or disappointment on each other, we have high expectations that others will meet our needs, we can be critical and demanding or experience others that way, sometimes we just take each other for granted. Today is a great day to focus on our familial relationships and to seek the grace we need to love our family members a bit more perfectly.
As difficult as family relationships can be, the formula is quite simple. On Monday, we read in Ephesians, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God . . .” The starting point is knowing, really knowing our own belovedness – you and I are beloved children of God. The more deeply we know God’s love in our inner being, the more naturally and easily we offer that same love to others. Just as children imitate and emulate their parents, so we are to imitate our Heavenly Father. Then, Paul says, we live in love as Christ loved us. As Christ loves us – in exactly the same way that Christ loves us – that’s how we are called to love each other.
Christ’s love is unconditional and sacrificial. In today’s reading from Ephesians, Paul exhorts children to obey their parents in the Lord and reminds us of the Commandment to honor our father and mother (Exodus 20:12). Paul tells fathers not to provoke their children to anger, but to instruct them and train them in the Lord. How we love and how we learn to love begins at home. The parent-child relationship is key because it is predicated on and to be modeled after our relationship with God, our Heavenly Father. Honoring, respecting, loving unconditionally, being willing to sacrifice – these are all characteristics of our relationships with our parents and our children.
My Mom is 88 years old and has transitioned to a new phase of life in the past year due to a major health set-back. Currently, she’s facing another set of challenges that requires more of my support and advocacy. She and I are in a new stage on our journey, one in which I think and pray a lot about what honoring her looks like and how I can best do that. Recently, I was talking with someone who has a strained relationship with his mother and harbors a lot of bitterness and resentment from the past which affects how he thinks about her needs and his support of her. I’m sure each person reading this reflection today has at least one strained relationship or a relationship that requires significant personal sacrifice and unselfishness. Let us pray today about what it means to be an imitator of God in these relationships.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to us, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate . . .” I believe the narrow gate is the way of love. Jesus goes on to say, “. . . for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.” It takes great inner strength to humble yourself and to love sacrificially. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s downright difficult! I don’t think Jesus paints a picture of exclusivity – the narrow gate isn’t intended to only afford passage for a few – no, it’s just that Jesus recognizes how hard it is for us to love others as he loves us. When he says to those who are knocking at the door that he doesn’t know them, it’s because he doesn’t see the love of God displayed in their lives. He doesn’t know them as ones who loves like he does. Jesus recognizes those who are clothed in him, as Paul says to the Colossians, “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Col. 3:12-14).
The narrow gate is broadly inclusive – people come from north, south, east, and west to enter it. Those who do, however, are the ones who put themselves last in order to become first in the Kingdom of God.
It all begins at home. Let’s practice with our family members today loving as Christ loves. Ask God for the grace you need to enter through the narrow gate of love, and to respect, honor, and serve your family sacrificially today.
Elizabeth Wells