Challenges

Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes it is very hard.

Sometimes everything in our life, everything we had planned and everything for which we have worked, is broken up and scattered beyond restoration.

Today’s second reading (Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13) reminds us that God can use such life challenges to bring greater power to our faith.

“My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord
or lose heart when reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;
he scourges every son he acknowledges.”
Endure your trials as “discipline”;
God treats you as sons.
For what “son” is there
whom his father does not discipline?

At the time,
all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain,
yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness
to those who are trained by it.

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees.
Make straight paths for your feet,
that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed.

Today’s Gospel (Luke 13:22-30) reminds us that the way of holiness is narrow and requires more than pious coasting.

We must strive to enter by the narrow gate - to do and to endure things which are difficult – remembering, of course, that we are not called to do this on our own: God gives his grace and, as the Gospel and the first reading (Isaiah 66:18-21) remind us, God will bring together what seems scattered in an eternal renewal of glory.