The Narrow Gate Means First Things First

Why peace and freedom require the tranquility of order

“Seek First the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, and All These Things Will Be Added Unto You.”

The prescription is simple; the doing of it is hard. We are distracted people, and we live in a culture that intentionally diverts our attention and seeks to have us sink time and money into projects and entertainments that make money for their producers and owners and give little back to us in return.

The Narrow Gate

Jesus continues on in the Sermon on the Mount with another saying of His that is equally famous to the first one above:

“Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and easy is the path that leads to destruction; but narrow is the gate and hard is the path that leads to eternal life, and few there are who are on it.”

Each day, many times a day perhaps, we are faced with those two gates. Or perhaps, having opted for the narrow gate long ago, lovely enticing side trails appear with astonishing regularity to lead us back to the wide and easy path as we seek, having entered the narrow gate, to find ourselves welcome at the pearly gates. The way we persist on to heaven’s gate is to keep first things first.

The Right Order

The right order is God, family, friends, and work.

A Rule of Life Forms Desire and Habit

St. Benedict writes in his famous Rule, “Indeed, nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God.” The immediate context is the Daily Office: when the monks hear the signal calling them to prayer, they are to drop whatever they are doing, make haste to the church, and assemble with the brothers in prayer.

What can this mean for us who are not vowed religious? A plan of life with set times for devotions — morning prayer, Mass, evening prayer, Rosary, Scripture reading, other devotions throughout the day as may be suitable for us — will guide us through the day. We make it a point to keep to the rule to the very best of our ability and come what may. God comes first. Worship comes first. The plan without the schedule is simply an intention. Living the schedule makes the plan work, and it reorders our lives.

Marriage Is Your Desert

Aidan Kavanagh OSB once simply told a young man who thought he aspired to monasticism and priesthood, “Marriage is your desert.” That sounds bleak until we recall that in the desert God’s glory shines forth in pellucid clarity, and that the desert is the place where everything inessential is removed so that only love is left. The desert is the place of encounter with God, and it is the place where freedom is won or lost.

A real marriage is hard work. It requires constant renunciation. The hard work is the battle between what we want and what our marriages need, and the differences in perspective and temperament that each spouse brings.

We men wander readily from this focus: we want to conquer the world, not fix the drain. We often prefer the building of alliances outside the home to the building of the alliance to which we have given the entirety of our lives. We often want to rest at home when our wives need our work. Their concerns often escape us, and our misunderstanding can cause our wives to suffer. We can be indifferent to our wives’ suffering while insisting that we are not.

Wives often frustrate their husbands, and themselves, because they want their husbands to care about things in ways that men cannot. This does not mean she is wrong to draw his attention to matters that ought to concern him; the mistake lies in assuming that what is obvious to her should be obvious to him.

How might they work the clashes? They can agree on working together on a common task, or agreeing that when they are resting so as to enjoy each other anew, they will keep the problems at bay. They can restore a date night — or keep it, if they have not been. They can have a common hobby. They can agree to let the other speak for as long as the other needs to: no interruptions, no outbursts of anger; just quiet attention that looks to affirm and state the truth in what the other has said and to work for a loving solution.

The desert is a place of conflict. Conflict and clash are not to be avoided: embraced, they lead to solutions neither spouse could have foreseen. Misunderstandings easily arise: two become one flesh principally through the union of their wills. When their wills are in conflict, clash is inevitable. When husband and wife work the clashes together, respecting differences in temperament and outlook, the desert blossoms and their dance resumes.

The steps of this dance are to put God first, and then, within the marriage, to put the spouse first, looking to serve rather than be served. Sometimes the work is to give each other a break. Sometimes it is to redirect the other’s attention and energy, but in a way that the other knows oneself to be loved and supported. It is always a matter of delicacy and tact. We knew this when we were courting. That is what made the courtship so beautiful.

When we keep courting, the beautiful dance creates love and peace at home. The marriage becomes happier. The house settles down. Peace reigns, and it grows as each grows in greater security of the spouse’s love — the active desire of the other’s good.

Your Children Notice Everything

The children notice when the dance is going well, and they know when Dad is still courting Mom. They are happy and secure when the dance is good and the courting is lovely. When they are not, children suffer — often more than we allow ourselves to admit. Children want and need there to be peace and love between their parents. They flourish under those conditions, and parents find that when their marriages are happy and flourishing, it is easy for them to give their children the time and attention they desire and need. Five minutes of what you estimate to be “quality time” with your kid is time your kid reckons was reluctantly given, if given at all. Your kids need a lot of time, your time, and they need you all in when you are with them. Remember: they become what you model, not what you tell them to become.

God, Wife, Family

God, wife, family: the big three. Keep all of this together and you are well down the path that is hard but leads to eternal life. The rule of life, the dance of love, and the nurture of children: these things give strength when the challenges of life arise. To this we must add prayer. Not “mine”: “ours.” As Fr. Patrick Peyton famously said, “The family that prays together, stays together.” The family home, like the monastery, is a school for the Lord’s service, a school of love, and a fortress against the raging storms of life. Teach your kids to pray when they are young, stay at it through their adolescence, practice the faith and teach them to practice it, too, and now you are taking generations with you through the narrow gate down the hard path that leads to life, for they will pass these habits to their own children, who pass it on to theirs in turn.

No Man Is an Island, and Neither Is a Monastery

Then come friends. We like to think of monasteries as isolated communities of peace and serenity. Well, they are communities of friends who become brothers and sisters through common struggle and the overcoming of personality clashes, and the communities are friends with other communities. As with our homes, the peace and serenity of the monastery is hard-won.

Friends are those who live our lives, share our goals and struggles, and work toward the same end, giving and receiving counsel, guidance, and support. Lives are enriched in this mutual exchange. Monastics have friends. Monasteries are friends with other monasteries. In marriage, families and communities are strengthened as friends continually help friends stay on the hard and narrow path. That is why the order is friends before work: friends help you do the real work in life, which is preparation for heaven.

Work Is a School of Perfection in Virtue

Friends come before work because people precede activities in importance. But work is important, too: the command to work in the Garden was given before the Fall. God gives us a beautiful world, and He expects us to do our part to maintain and enhance it. We do our part through work, not wishful thinking. We cannot share the goods of Creation and of human ingenuity if there are no goods to share.

Work is where we perfect our virtues and our talents by pursuing gainful employment. It is where we earn the means to provide for our families and for others, to the extent we are able, by engaging in common effort to provide goods or services needed by all. Nor is work solely about “earning the means.” Work and social life teach prudence: how to invest, how to make long-term, generational plans for family wealth and commitments, and how to protect the means God has entrusted to our care. But the priority in work has to be people, and unless it is an openly competitive situation played fairly and squarely, “I win, you lose” is a bad outcome. We want people to walk away better for having had dealings with us — to win through cooperation and to grow even in competition.

Life in a Liberal Democracy

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, we will be hearing a lot about inalienable rights. This requires some reflection. There is indeed an inalienable right to life: all of us, however gifted or needy, have a right to life from conception to natural death.

The right to liberty is a little trickier. Liberty, or freedom, is first of all a condition of the soul. We are created free: this was Pope St. John Paul II’s powerful reminder to the Poles in his first papal journey home, in the Spring of 1979. We have the power to choose what is right or wrong; this is where freedom really lies. He reminded the Poles, and the rest of humanity, that freedom is something for which we must fight and which we must guard. Surrender to sin, choice for the wrong, results in diminishment of freedom. Growth in grace and virtue means growth in freedom.

Liberty as a political concept means the absence of constraint upon pursuing ways, means, and ends that result in greater personal and community freedom. It cannot, however, mean the right to do whatever we want, as long as we harm no one else, as though it were possible to act in a vacuum. All of our actions, good and bad, reverberate outward and affect everyone alive and history itself. All of our wicked deeds, even the ones no one knows about, even the ones that are merely mental, negatively affect everyone else and not just ourselves. True freedom requires vigilance. We have a right to grow in freedom. We have no right to diminish it in ourselves or others.

The pursuit of happiness is also tricky, for happiness is not something we can pursue. Lasting happiness is the result of peace; and peace, St. Augustine tells us in The City of God, is the tranquillity of order. Peace arises when we pursue the right thing in the right way at the right time for the right reasons. It arises when choices are free and priorities are in order. Sure, we may be momentarily happy in our distractions — and diversions are also a necessary part of life, not its purpose — yet we have found so often that the happiness of distractions came at great cost. We are always liable to deception, and self-deception is the worst deception of all.

Back to the Beginning: Seeking the Kingdom of God

Life, freedom, and peace are found as we do God’s will: this is the constant witness of Holy Scripture, Church history, and the lives of the saints. This will is no arbitrary imposition of an angry God determined that we toe the line or else. No: God created us that we might live in the fullest possible way: this is His will for us. The purpose of the Redemption was not so much to restore us to our prior condition as it was to raise us even higher, to a life that is a share in the mystery of His own. God has shown us how to live in the commandments and precepts. He has given us in the sacraments and devotions the means to order our lives and to live in grace and friendship with Him, our loved ones, and with the entire world, even creating in us the capacity to love even our enemies.

Is a natural happiness possible apart from God’s plan for us? Yes indeed: the real thing is the peace that passes understanding, a peace that maintains the soul in tranquil order, come what may, because the soul knows that all that comes is meant for the good of those who love God. All who witness this peace are astonished, and they are faced with a choice — the narrow gate or the wide gate.

The Plan of Life, the home as fortress and school of prayer, the family as the echo of love through the ages, friendship as bulwark and buttress, work as a school of virtue, and citizenship as the place we battle for the common good: these elements are the blazes on the narrow path that lead to eternal life — a life that has begun in us already and that will issue forth in abundant peace when we keep first things first and all the rest in proper order.

A Note on Temperament

People differ in temperament and giftedness; the rules and practices suggested here must be adapted prudently to particular families and persons.