The beginning of our Gospel reading today reminds us that during these weeks in Ordinary Time, as we read through St. Luke’s Gospel in a semi-continuous way, we journey with Jesus and his disciples from their native Galilee to Jerusalem. Their journey, which is a pilgrimage, is a metaphor for our lives as pilgrims, members of God’s pilgrim people, the Church, making our way to the city of God. Along these same lines, it also bears remembering that in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus travels to the holy city only once during his ministry.
As he makes his way, Jesus conducts a School of Discipleship. Fundamental to being a disciple of Jesus is grasping the nature of God’s kingdom. From the perspective of our fallenness, God’s kingdom is a bizarro world, a world turned upside-down and backward.
Jesus gives insight into the nature of God’s kingdom when he tells his largely Jewish listeners the first will be last and the last will be first. Specifically, he refers to the inclusion of Gentiles, who will come “from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.”1 Our reading from Isaiah tells of the opening of the one covenant to everyone, which prophecy is fulfilled through Jesus Christ.
As a theological principle, however, the first being last and the last being first needs a broader application. This application occurs in our Blessed Mother’s Magnificat:
He has shown the strength of his arm.The revolutionary nature of the Gospel, so powerfully captured in the Magnificat, must first happen within you. By proclaiming God’s kingdom and calling you to conversion, Jesus seeks to awaken you from your slumber, urging you to reform your life. This reform consists of shaping yourself in accord with God’s kingdom. As Martin Luther, taking his cue from St. Bernard of Clairvaux, insisted, the shape of fallen humanity is best described by the Latin phrase homo incurvatus se (i.e., the human being curved in on her/himself). Following Jesus bends you outward, away from yourself and toward your neighbor. This can be painful at times.
He has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones
and has lifted up the lowly
He has filled the hungry with good things
and the rich he has sent away empty2
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about having the strength to enter through the narrow gate. You might well ask- How do I receive this strength? In the first instance, Christ strengthens you in and through the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. The other part of the answer can be found in our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. As Jesus’s disciples, we develop the strength we need by practicing the disciplines he taught us. After all, a disciple is one who practices the disciplines taught and modeled by her/his master.
When speaking of God’s discipline it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the point of authentically parental discipline is not retributive punishment of the wayward child. Rather, its purpose is to help the child understand the importance of self-discipline to growing in maturity and to realizing true happiness.
The Lord teaches three spiritual disciplines: prayer, fasting, and alms-giving. Prayer, which includes the sub-disciplines of silence and solitude, meditation and contemplation, is where everything begins. Along with authentic worship, genuine prayer leads to compassionate action, that is, to selflessly serving others. Alms-giving is more than giving money, it requires you to give of yourself, your time, your skill, your energy.
Fasting, the most neglected spiritual discipline, integrates prayer and alms-giving. When you fast, sooner or later you will grow hungry. This is the point of fasting. Your physical hunger should prompt you ask a really important question: What am I really hungry for? Fasting helps you discipline yourself, strengthening you to resist harmful impulses as well as to live in solidarity with those in need.
It must be noted, spiritual disciplines are not ends in themselves but means to the end of loving God by loving your neighbor as you love yourself. The purpose of practicing spiritual disciplines, then, is to develop holy habits. Another name for holy habits is virtues.
Most of you are familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins. But how many know that each deadly sin has a contrary virtue? For example, the virtue that overcomes pride is humility, the virtue that trumps envy is kindness, charity is the opposite of greed, etc. Virtues are those habits on which we can rely to make our lives work, to make the lives of others work, and make the world a better place. Vices, by contrast, are habits we can rely on to make our lives not work, to bring down others, and to trap us in a cycle of dysfunction.
Holiness is not mindless adherence to rules and regulations. Mindlessly adhering to rules and regulations has no power to bring about conversion. Following Jesus is never a matter of going through the motions. Christian discipleship is always intentional. Holiness cannot be imposed on you from the outside. But if you hunger and thirst for holiness, God will fill you with good things.
Living a disciplined life is not a way to earn to God’s favor. Through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by virtue of your baptism, you already enjoy God’s favor. Engaging in spiritual practices is how you attune yourself to the frequency of God’s grace. Practicing the spiritual disciplines is not magic, there is no ex opere operato involved. It is by practicing the disciplines of a follower of Christ that you come to know and to be known by the Lord.
Far from seeking to control outward things, holiness is about making your heart responsive to God in each and every circumstance in which you find yourself. As Richard Foster defines it, holiness is “the ability to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.”3 I would add that holiness is the ability to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done and doing it in the proper way.
Because Jesus is our master, our teacher, it is important to come to know him by reading the Gospels. A lot of the material in each of the four Gospels consists of vignettes in which Jesus encounters people experiencing various situations and crises. He does not have a template, a one-size-fits-all answer, for the people he encounters. Rather, he deals with life’s big questions as they arise in the circumstances of peoples’ lives. Holiness, Foster, continues, “means being ‘response-able,’ able to respond appropriately to the demands of life.”4 Learning this is how you become like Christ.
As our Collect today notes, it is by loving what God commands that you truly come to desire what God promises. It is the purpose of the new life Christ gave you baptism to acclimate yourself to God’s kingdom. For most of us, this means experiencing a sea-change in what we desire. Practicing spiritual disciplines is how you open yourself to God’s grace, letting God change your heart. Practicing the spiritual disciplines is also how you make God’s kingdom a present reality. Through such practice, you bring God’s kingdom, our promised future, into the here-and-now.
1 Luke 13:29.↩
2 Luke 1:51-53.↩
3 Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water, from Renovaré website- https://renovare.org/articles/defining-the-holiness-tradition-virtuous-life.↩
4 Ibid.↩
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