Matthew 7:13
Enter through the narrow gate. A homily from the Rome pilgrimage.
I’ve been thinking about all the narrow paths we walked on the pilgrimage in Rome and Florence and Assisi, down the alleys and crooked streets and up the many steps and stairways.
I’ve been thinking about the all narrow gates, through the security checkpoints and into the churches and museums, and about the Holy Doors, at St. Peters and St. Paul Outside the Walls and all the others, which were narrow, too, massive and high but narrow.
All the lines we stood in.
All the squeezing to a point.
I’ve been thinking about the tight schedule we were on, the narrow margins of time we were given, and necessarily—all of this was necessary. If we didn’t come back on time, we missed the bus. If we didn’t stay on the narrow route, we didn’t get where we were going.
Sometimes, in some ways, it’s good to be narrow-minded.
I’ve been thinking about the eyes of the David, in Florence, of their great intensity, and focus, and determination—and of the intensity and balance and poise of his whole magnificent body, and how it’s only this focus and this narrowing, this great coming to a point, that makes it possible for him to kill Goliath with his single stone.
Sometimes, in some ways, it’s good to be narrow-minded.
And of the intensity of Michelangelo in his making of this glorious thing, his great single-mindedness, blow by blow and cut by cut, over three years.
We are all wandering and lost, as Dante was wandering and lost in the dark wood Florence, when he was exiled, and it’s because we are too open-minded, are listening to too many other voices, are taking too much in, and we have to make a choice, decide on a way, decide who to trust and who to follow, again and again, and that someone is Christ, is Our Lord Jesus, the One Thing Necessary, the Only Thing.
Prefer nothing whatever to Christ, St. Benedict says.
Those of us in the group talked a lot what we were going to do when got back home, how we were going to use the energy we felt in Italy, and I think that has to mean narrowing our focus, concentrating this energy. We can’t be fiddling with our phones or talking about lunch when rising above us, right there in our midst, is the David. We have to look at him with some of the intensity he shows us, because that’s not David that Michelangelo has sculpted, it’s Christ, Christ in all his vitality and humanity.
Then everything opens up again. We come through the narrow door and suddenly we’re inside a magnificent church, a vast, echoing nave.
God himself is narrowing his focus, to you and to me.
God narrowed himself down so radically he became a man, a baby in a manger, and through that narrow wooden box comes a whole universe—on that narrow wooden cross everything was ripped open and sanctified—we make this choice and we eat this one small circle of bread and the whole Parousia is ours, the end of the old world and the beginning of the new.
This is what we find when we get through the narrow gate. This is what we get to: to glory, to beauty.
And all the while, whether we are lost or found, scattered or focused, God himself is looking at us, just as intently as the David is looking out at Goliath, but not to kill but to save us.
To love us. God himself is narrowing his focus, to you and to me. Each one of us, somehow, in his marvelous grace, is the point He comes to.