Words of the Lord to the Pharisees of yesterday and today
IN the Gospel, the Lord Jesus often shows Himself to be gentle, benevolent, indulgent... these passages are commented on so often today that listeners get used to it. And the commentary can be very one-sided and therefore incomplete, and therefore somehow false : “Jesus is good, he multiplies miracles, cures for poor people ? That’s normal ! “. So when the words of Christ hit us and when Our Lord, by chance, takes a more demanding and rigorous tone... then that’s not going well! But it is this same reaction that the Pharisees experienced 2000 years ago, and it is the same that is reproduced today... no really, we are not better than them!
“Someone said to Jesus, ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ ” The question is incisive. Today, from the heights of the teaching Church to the base of the taught Church, all answer frankly that, “of course, there is nobody or at least very few people in Hell”, and that consequently “the vast majority of men are saved”. Is this really what Christ taught?
But He said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I assure you, will seek to enter and will not be able to after the Master of the house [it is Christ] has arisen and shut the door and you will start standing outside and banging on the door saying, ‘Lord, open to us!’ And he will answer you: ‘I don’t know where you are from. Then you will start saying, “We ate and drank in Your presence and You taught in our squares.” He will say to you: “I assure you, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!’ ” Terrible words... but words of the Lord! This too is the Gospel: we must not forget it. I cannot change the gospel, and if I imagine myself to have a better heart than Christ and invent a gospel of unconditional love , I delude myself and confuse all to whom I must make known the truth of the word of God.
For Jesus speaks in order to be understood by all, and if He said: “ Strive to enter through the narrow door” , this means that the conditions of salvation are rigorous, and that “many” will not enter the door . . No matter how much we shout, beg after death... the Master of the house will be inflexible, because He will see in us something invincibly bad. And he will shut the door in our face. There will be no escape! Man will then be compelled by the tone of Christ to lose all his composure and realize that he is lost... but it will be too late, and he will go to join his fate for eternity. This is the Gospel! It is therefore worthwhile for each of us to re-examine our lives in this crucial light...
When He spoke in those days to the crowds, Jesus had in His crosshairs the Jews of His own time, and mainly the Pharisees who pressed Him with questions, laid snares for Him to test Him and finally found a reason to condemn Him. He tells them what is to come, which is terrifying. They are indeed first of all “the children of the Kingdom” whom Jesus wants to warn, because if they continue in their obstinate opposition to the “Master of the house”, they will be thrown into outer darkness, where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”.
These are not “realities of another age”, as some would like us to believe... these words of Christ remain, on the contrary, burning topicality! For about sixty years, the vast majority of theologians have supported this belief that everyone is saved. How then would we still dare to recall the Gospel Faith, alone against all, so to speak, if the Blessed Virgin, at Fatima, had not descended to earth in order to shake off our lukewarmness and revive our cooled charity by reminding us of this truth that “ many souls go to Hell [sic] because they have no one to pray and sacrifice for them” which she said in this month of August one hundred and five years and one day ago.
If the previous July 13, saddened by this terrible reality, the Blessed Virgin showed Hell to the three little seers, she also indicated the means to prevent these masses of people from going to Hell. The daily Rosary, monthly Confession, and so on.
We must therefore realize the greatness of Our Lord, the immensity of His wisdom, the demands of His Heart in order to obtain from His Father, in Heaven, the salvation of all human beings, and to measure also the fear that He manifests of not being understood, not followed. Looking to the future, does He not see the Cross on which He must die? If He gave birth to the Catholic Church, His House, it was precisely so that, through her, millions of souls would be saved from Hell. Nevertheless, Jesus knows it well, his Church will have to pass through the great apostasy predicted by the Scriptures. The saints, the book of Revelation tells us, will be defeated in those times, while all the charlatans, the false prophets will be listened to, in proportion to the impiety of their speeches...
In conclusion, our first duty is to guard the treasure of our Catholic Faith in order to welcome, lamps lit and heart burning with love, our divine Master Who is soon to return in a world that no longer thinks of His coming.
Brother Bruno of Jesus-Marie
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