Today’s passage  continues  the Sermon on the Mount

Jesus contrasts the narrow gate with the wide road. To follow the wide road is to do just about anything you feel like doing. It is to follow your likes and dislikes, your instincts and whims wherever they lead you. That is going to include following roads of greed and self-centredness, of lies and deceit, perhaps even of violence and hurt. It is clearly not a way of life.

The narrow gate is not to be narrow-minded. It is rather to be very clearly focused on certain very specific ways of thinking and acting, having one’s life guided by a clear set of truths, principles and values—those truths, principles and values which form the core of the Gospel’s teaching.

In other words, the Way of Christ. It is a way that leads to life.

It is a hard road only in the sense that it requires discipline, and it is true that relatively few people find it. But in the long run, it is the easier way because it conforms more to the deepest needs and desires of the human person.

The Way of Jesus is not an eccentric choice of lifestyle, one religion among many; rather it is in total harmony with all that human life is meant to be.

​

​