The audio is here.
“Many are called but few
are chosen.” Are we to take this
statement literally? What does our
Lord mean? Are there those who are
doomed to be excluded from Heaven?
Why can’t everyone but the worst people go there? Surely most people get to go to Heaven
because most people are not murderers or rapists or thieves? Surely Hell is nearly empty? How many will be saved in the end? Elsewhere in the Gospels our Lord
refuses to answer the question of how many will be saved. He will not answer the
question. Why?
To understand our Lord we
must understand a few things. First
the passage I have just read must be understood in the context of our Lord’s
confrontation with His fellow Jews who will not believe in Him. For generations, centuries, they had
been promised a Divine intervention, a Saviour who would grant them the power
to truly keep the Law. Our Lord is
the fulfillment of these promises.
He is God made flesh for us, the Word of the Father, the True and
Perfect Lawgiver, and they owe Him obedience and worship. They have been called to the Wedding
that is the Kingdom promised to them but have made excuses, preferring the
things of this world to those of the next. Therefore, our Lord points out that the Gospel will be
directed to those who are outcasts, the sinners, the Gentiles, us. Yet there is a condition on entering
the Kingdom even for us; it is not a blanket welcome. The wedding garment that is asked of us may be the Sacrament
of Baptism, or faith in Christ as God made man or a life of virtue. Indeed the wedding garment made of all
three.
The “few” might mean that
there are very few who will get to Heaven or that few among the Jews will or
that few will freely co-operate with God’s grace and seek the heights of
holiness. The “many” obviously means
all mankind for, as St Paul says, “God wants everyone to be saved.” Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel we read
that “many will come from East and West” to take the places in the Kingdom that
should have gone to the Jews. The
passage, therefore, is not entirely clear. Why does our Lord leave it so vague?
The reason our Lord refuses
to answer the question of how many will be saved and does not clarify what he
means by “many are called but few are chosen,” is that He wishes us to avoid
two extremes, two dangers. These
two dangers to be avoided are those of despair and complacency. If we think that few are saved, as many
fundamentalist Protestants do, then we risk driving others and even ourselves
into despair. On the other hand,
if we think that few will be lost and most of us are going to heaven, there is
the risk of complacency. The
complacent make no effort to produce the fruit that our Lord asks of us while
those who despair no longer try to avoid evil. Neither seek to repent and to change and make no effort to
convert others to Christ. The complacent do so because they do not believe in
God’s justice while those who despair do not believe in God’s mercy.
The Catholic understanding
of our Lord’s teaching is that we do not know who is saved, apart from the canonized
saints of the Church, but neither do we know who is lost. “Count no one lost before the day of
Judgment” say the Fathers of the Church.
They would add though that neither should we presume on our own
salvation. St Paul tells us that
we should do as he does and strive like an athlete in the Olympic games not to
win a medal but to win eternal life.
St Peter says that we should work out our salvation in fear and
trembling. By this he means that
we must avoid despair by making every effort to do our Lord’s will and
co-operate with His grace but also know that without final perseverance we
cannot be saved. We should fear
and loathe evil, any sin of any kind, especially our own sins, while trusting
that God is merciful to any and all who turn to Him. Now is the time that we have for salvation. Now is the time we have been given to
win the race and enter Heaven.
What of those we love who
no longer practice their Faith?
What of those immersed in second unions, bogged down in addiction, or
heedless of God’s commands? What
of brothers and sisters, children and friends who have turned their back on God
or so it seems? What about them? St Therese of Lisieux once took it into
her heart to pray for a condemned murderer. She prayed earnestly for him and just before he was about to
be executed he reached out, seized the crucifix the priest was holding and
kissed it. This she took to be a
sign of sincere repentance and that the man was saved. Only God knows how long he may have had to spend suffering in
purgatory but at least he was on the way to Heaven.
If we want to see our loved
ones saved then we must take our own salvation seriously. As a Russian saint said “become a saint
and you will save a thousand souls.”
God wants everyone to be saved for the very small price of faith, a gift
He has given to all though many neglect to unwrap it. When we seek to become holy we become reservoirs of grace and
when we pray sincerely and earnestly for others we become channels of Divine
grace to them. We may not see the
fruits of our prayers in this life but God always rewards faithfulness and
obedience. He wants us to put our
whole faith and trust in Him, to let Him be the center of our lives. When He is at the center then
everything falls into its proper place and our lives and the lives of others
are transformed. This is our time
to become saints. We are running
the race now. Let us not get
distracted, fall away and lose.