Transcript
We are coming into the footy finals. The teams who have been taking it one week at time will soon be one win, or loss, away from knowing how their season ends. Sport, any sport, is meant to celebrate the abilities and character of the human person and ultimately build a better society through a vision of personal discipline, team work and commitment. But like just everything in life, those noble ideals can be lured away by distractions, by excess, by corruption, by greed. This sporting pressure to succeed, to be seen as a winner, is the same sort of pressure that most of us encounter in life in some way, shape or form. Our behaviours can be distorted by our own desire to be seen as a success and high achiever, and we can fall prey to the temptation to follow the crowd. We see others who cut corners, who are dishonest, who bend the rules, who use people for their own advantage, and we think, well, if they can get away with it. Jesus says in the gospel, take the journey of life by the narrow way. It’s narrow because not everybody follows this path. This is the road that requires sacrifice and wisdom and courage. It’s easy to travel the wide road, to compromise and let others do our thinking for us. We can be pressured into doing things that we don’t really want to do, and then we end up being people that we don’t really want to be. The narrow way means choosing honesty ahead of deceit, choosing courtesy ahead of gruffness, choosing acceptance ahead of prejudice, choosing compassion ahead of self-interest, choosing love of others ahead of love of self. Despite the temptations to travel the wide road, Jesus teaches us to travel this narrow path. It’s sometimes a lonely and difficult path, but this is the way Christ walked, and He promises to walk this path with us every step.