There is a humour about a man who died and went to hell.\u00a0 To his surprise he saw his parish priest there.\u00a0 \u201cFather, I did not expect you here<\/em>\u201d, he said.\u00a0 The priest shushed him, \u201cthe bishop is below us. Don\u2019t let him hear you<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 This cruel joke contains some biblical truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When asked \u201cLord is it true that only a few will be saved?<\/em>\u201d (Luke 13:23<\/em>), Jesus said \u201cstrive to enter through the narrow door<\/em>\u201d (Luke 13:24<\/em>).\u00a0 It made the early Christians, who were a mix of people from different cultures and places, reflect on the Jewish heritage of the Church.\u00a0 Majority of the Jews in Jerusalem were observant of their temple practices and laws of ritual purity.\u00a0 Therefore, they would have considered themselves as already in the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 Yet not a lot of the Jews were found among the early Church communities.\u00a0 Where did they go wrong?\u00a0 The answer is that they were not generous in living out God\u2019s goodness.\u00a0 While observing all the rituals of the religion to the detail, they were focussed on themselves and not concerned about others.\u00a0 They were not generous with the spirit of love and compassion.\u00a0 They did not try hard enough to enter the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 Mind you, this warning was not just for the Jews, but for all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If any member of the Church think that going through all the motions of the sacraments and Sunday obligation will assure you a place in the Kingdom of God, think again.\u00a0 You might tell the Lord, \u201cWe ate and drank your company and you taught in our streets<\/em>\u201d, meaning doing Churchy things; yet if you are not generous with the Spirit of God, which is love and compassion, you too could be counted to be the last by God.\u00a0 The Lord who sees the inner dealings of the heart will probe beyond your ritual observations in judging your religious integrity.\u00a0 Therefore, let us strive hard to enter through the narrow door of sharing, loving, and compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is your faith commitment? Can you say that you have chosen Jesus Christ above all other considerations?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a humour about a man who died and went to hell.\u00a0 To his surprise he saw his parish priest there.\u00a0 \u201cFather, I did not expect you here\u201d, he said.\u00a0 The priest shushed him, \u201cthe bishop is below us. Don\u2019t let him hear you\u201d.\u00a0 This cruel joke contains some biblical truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6178,"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6177\/revisions\/6178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpeter-stjoseph.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}