Dear Parish Family,
 
Love is learning to put others’ interests before our own. When someone is deeply in love, ‘real love’ he/she finds out that there is some self-emptying of personal wants to fulfil the needs of the loved one. When we have matured in this ‘love path way’, we may even recognize that love is really all-inclusive, that in loving “our neighbor as ourselves”, the one naturally flows into the other. We see that natural connection as we learn wisdom.

Parents need to teach their children!  While clearly loving them and allowing them space to make mistakes and to fail, they need to help them recognize that they are not the center of the world. One needs to know one has a God-given dignity and is precious first of all to the Creator. But at the same time there must be the realization that they do not have a right to be the center of attention, and that the world does not owe them anything. They have to be taught that they cannot have everything their way, that life can be hard; and that, “that is OK”. It is in adversity, whatever shape it comes in, that growth occurs. Young people have to learn that it is by accepting difference, by respecting the inherent dignity of others and relating accordingly, by not concentrating simply on their own fulfillment, that they in fact become truly alive. Salvation, ultimately, is acted out rather than passively received - learning to love “in sync” with God who loves everyone and who is purely and only love. Anything else is excess baggage that hinders passage through “the narrow door”.

The narrow gates of the old cities were wide enough for a person to get through. This gate is the size of a person because it is a person. Jesus is the narrow gate, the way by which anyone can get through to the heavenly city. In all the debates over who and how many will be saved, in our own musing about our own eternal lot, it is instructive to remember a truth that is disconcerting yet calming. We all most likely deserve a fate far less glorious than heaven looking squarely at the spiritual quality of our lives. After all, would not all of us be lost without Our Savior? But through him, the narrow gate, all may enter paradise, one by one in salvation’s long procession.
 
  Fr. Thomas Kunnel C.O.