Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
24 August 2025
First Reading: Isaiah 66:18-21
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 117:1, 2
Second Reading: Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13
Gospel: Luke 13:22-30
Reflection By:
Bro. Carlo Alexis Malaluan
Diocese of Imus
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit a Cistercian monastery in Portugal. We had a guided tour in where every single detail was explained to us by the guide. He told us how the monks used to live with great simplicity: simple dormitories, unadorned work room, and rhythms ordered around prayer, work, and silence. But what stayed with me the most was a small but curious detail — the door leading to the refectory, the monks’ dining room. It was too narrow — intentionally narrow. So narrow, in fact, that you’d have to remain physically fit just to pass through comfortably.
The guide remarked, “It helps them remember not to overeat.” We laughed, but the statement went deeper than health. It was about discipline. About restraint. About forming not just the body, but the soul.
And that image came rushing back to me when we read today’s Gospel: “Strive to enter through the narrow door.” Jesus speaks not of a wide, open gateway, but of one that must be intentionally entered. It doesn’t allow just anything to pass through—not baggage, not excess, not complacency. And then He warns: “Many will try to enter and will not be strong enough.”
It’s haunting, not because it excludes, but because it reveals something essential about discipleship: that entering the Kingdom requires a kind of spiritual fitness,not perfection. Not self-righteousness but readiness. It is a form of detachment which is a freedom from the excess that keeps us bloated with pride, entitlement, or spiritual laziness.
The narrow door doesn’t represent a God who’s trying to keep people out. It represents a God who wants to strip away what doesn’t give life. To enter, we must travel light.
Jesus even imagines a scenario where people knock on the door, claiming familiarity: “We ate and drank with you… you taught in our streets.” But He responds, “I do not know you.” It’s not that He never met them — it’s that they never truly followed Him. They stayed close, but they never entered. They knew of Him, but they didn’t allow their lives to be shaped by Him.
It’s easy to fall into that pattern. To hear the Gospel often but never let it press into our habits. To surround ourselves with religious things while remaining spiritually unfit to enter the narrow way of love, mercy, sacrifice, and obedience. The door is narrow, says the Gospel, not because God is exclusive, but because discipleship is real. It requires something from us. It calls us to become someone new.
And yet, the Gospel ends with hope: “People will come from the east and west, from the north and south, and will recline at table in the Kingdom of God.” The door is narrow but it is open. The feast is waiting. God’s desire is to fill His house. But He invites us to arrive ready, not bloated by excess, but lean in love. Not dragging what we cling to, but free to walk through with open hands.
So today, we might ask: What makes it hard for me to fit through the narrow door? What habits, attachments, or comforts weigh me down? And more deeply: Am I allowing Christ to shape me into someone who can pass through—not just at the end of life, but each day, in the choices I make?
Because the narrow door is not just the gate at the end. It’s the quiet choice in the middle of the day. It’s the discipline of a monk entering a refectory through a door that reminds him: less is more, and love is lean.
Prayer
