Enter by the Narrow Gate

Jesus is asked a question that preoccupies many of us: will many be saved, or few? He answers without answering, saying instead 'strive to enter by the narrow gate' - the narrow gate is humility, penitence, and following His commandments. We are fitted to go through the narrow gate especially through the sacrament of Confession.

Homily for Sunday 23 August 2025, St Peter's Church, Winchester

'The Last Judgement' by Stefan Lochner (1435) in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Köln

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Although I am a priest of this diocese of Portsmouth, my current assignment has taken me to Rome to study an advanced degree in Moral Theology – which means I spend a great deal of my time reading, and thinking, and talking about good and evil, and the difference between holiness and sin. One of the professors who teaches a seminar on my course is a German theologian, who also teaches an undergraduate Moral Theology course. He told our seminar group that failing his undergraduate moral theology course was very easy: he announces at the beginning of the year that every oral exam would begin with the same question, and that if you could not give a satisfactory answer to that question, you would fail. The question was this:

What is a mortal sin?

Father then told us that there are a great many theology students, a great many seminarians training to be priests, who could not answer that question – who could not tell him what is a mortal sin? As promised, they failed. In fact he told us that in one English Seminary (which I won’t name) he failed half the class on the basis that they could not adequately define: mortal sin.

It is a special kind of tragedy, that so many do not know what is a mortal sin – how, he asked, could they hear confessions, or preach the moral teaching of the Church, without having a basic, fundamental, understanding of sin.

Mortal sin is very clearly defined in the Catechism, it is a definitive turning away from God – it is an act which violates God’s eternal law, which is done knowing that the act is wrong, and freely choosing to do it anyway. These grave sins are sins against Charity: acts by which we fail to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul, or fail to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. More than a failure to love, they are acts of contempt for God and contempt for our neighbour. The guardrail against mortal sin is the law, given first to Moses on Mount Sinai, which we call the Ten Commandments – grave sin is idolatry, blasphemy, failing to keep the sabbath holy, dishonouring our parents, murder, adultery, lying, and jealously desiring that which does not belong to you. These sins destroy Charity, they destroy the life of God in us – they are mortal, like a mortal wound, because they kill the soul.

If it is so clear as this, why do so many theologians and seminarians fail to answer that question? It’s because of a devilish lie, that has crept ever so slowly into the life of the Church through a little whisper of doubt; that whisper of doubt tells us God doesn’t really care about sin.

As we have become more and more aware of the immensity of God’s creation, and the enormity of the universe, we have begun to see ourselves as very small and insignificant. The doubt creeps in, how could the God of all this, care about my little transgressions? On that great big cosmic scale, do my actions really matter?

When we start thinking like this, we start to believe that Mortal sin cannot really exist, because the idea of a sin so awful that it turns us away from God entirely is an absurdity to us: we don’t believe he really cares what we do, or say, or think, and so we don’t believe our actions can really separate us from Him.

Even eminent Theologians started to say, well, in this great cosmic scheme, perhaps everyone is saved, perhaps nobody is ever condemned.

This is why Gospel passages like today’s unsettle us so much – because Jesus repeatedly shatters the illusion that our actions don’t matter, or that everyone ends up being saved after all so we don’t have to worry about sin. Today, we hear one of the most terrifying lines in the Gospel:

When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us”, then he will answer you, “I do not know where you come from.” Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.” But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out.

Jesus warns, over and over again, that a time is coming (and coming soon) – that will be a time of separation. Sheep from goats, just from unjust, those who knew Him and those who did not. He uses this image a lot, to hammer it home to his Jewish audience: they would see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (their fathers) on the inside, but they themselves would be left out – to weep and grind their teeth, as someone else comes into their inheritance.

Jesus uses the metaphor of the narrow door: it’s open so that anyone can go through it if they want to, but it’s narrow so that it’s difficult to go through. Everybody is called to come through the door – but not everybody will go through it: some will ignore the call until it is too late, others will be too wide to fit through it, others will try to carry too much through with them, and will get stuck. But the door is going to close someday.

What Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel then is two things.

Number 1: Do not delay. As soon as you hear the sound of my voice, calling you, come through the door. Don’t put it off, don’t assume you have time, don’t assume there’s always tomorrow. Come through the door before it’s too late and the door has been closed.

Number 2: Be prepared to come through the door; be prepared to shed the extra weight, and to drop the things that will weigh you down, so that you can actually enter through the door while it’s open.

What Jesus is really doing, is calling us to conversion – to hear His voice, to listen to His commandments, to follow Him.

I began with my professor, and mortal sin, for a deliberate reason. Because one of the things that weighs us down – the spiritual fat that will stop us from getting through the door – is sin.

In the second reading, St Paul makes clear the reality of God’s love for each one of us – not a permissive love, not indifference towards us, but the love of a Father who cares deeply and intimately how we live our lives. The love of a Father, who wants us to grow and mature and be perfect. The reality of Sin is that it cuts us off from God the Father, it turns us away from Him. Committing a Mortal Sin is being like a teenager having a temper tantrum – slamming the door in their mother or father’s face.

The way is narrow, because it requires each one of us to acknowledge our sins, to ask forgiveness, and to ask for help not to sin again – it requires us to open the door we’ve slammed and ask God to make us fit and worthy to come through. The challenge for the week then is this: when was the last time I went to Confession? When was the last time I took stock of my life, of my actions, and asked God for forgiveness, and help to be better?

Jesus is asked will many or few be saved – and he puts the ball back into our court: it’s up to you. Will you listen? Will you repent? Will you come through the narrow door?