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Someone asks Jesus a question in today’s Gospel, and we could wonder about his motivations. “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” Does he want the answer to be yes or no? He might want to hear that only a few will be saved — for example, that only the Jews would be saved, and the Gentiles would remain uninvited to the kingdom — as long as he feels his own salvation is “in the bag.”

He would feel special being part of an elite few, and he would feel secure knowing that his salvation was already a done deal, determined by the fact that he was circumcised and a descendant of Abraham, or that he spent some time in proximity to the Messiah.

On the other hand, if he was unsure of his own salvation, he might want to hear that many are saved. If salvation is limited to a few, how could he be sure that he would make the cut? If many will be saved, then maybe he has a better chance, hopefully without the need to apply himself to anything difficult.

We do not know for sure the man’s motivation in asking the question. But whatever it was, Jesus’ answer shows how both of those possible motivations are misdirected.

“Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough,” he says. He continues, explaining that it will not be enough to say that you ate and drank with the Messiah, or that he taught in your streets. While those unworthy will be locked out of the kingdom and told to depart, “people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.”

So, is Jesus’ response restrictive or expansive? Is he saying that few will be saved, or many? He is saying both, in different senses (few and many are relative terms, after all). The offer of salvation is given to all people, Jew and Gentile alike, through Christ Jesus. People will come into the kingdom from every direction, north, south, east and west. In this sense, his answer is expansive and not restrictive.

Nevertheless, he says that many will try to enter and will fail to do so. One does not simply coast into heaven automatically. There is an earnest striving required: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.”

This is how his answer is both restrictive and expansive. It is expansive (universal, in fact) with respect to the offer of salvation and restrictive with respect to the difficulty.  As Pope Benedict XVI explained in his Angelus address Aug. 26, 2007, “The passage to eternal life is open to all, but it is ‘narrow’ because it is demanding: it requires commitment, self-denial and the mortification of one’s selfishness … Salvation, which Jesus brought with his death and Resurrection, is universal. He is the One Redeemer and invites everyone to the banquet of immortal life; but on one and the same condition: that of striving to follow and imitate him, taking up one’s cross as he did, and devoting one’s life to serving the brethren. This condition for entering heavenly life is consequently one and universal.”

The man who asked the question might have been hoping for exactly the opposite answer: that salvation was restricted to a few, a group to which he already surely belonged, and yet expansive in the sense of being easy for everyone already in that group. Not so.

This teaching is profitable for us, even if we were not asking the question. We might fall into the same trap, presuming that our own salvation is “in the bag” because we eat and drink with the Lord (in fact we eat and drink the Lord’s very body and blood in the most holy Eucharist), and we constantly hear him teach “in our streets” through the teaching of the church. St. Paul reminds us that it is possible to eat and drink our own condemnation through unworthy reception of the Blessed Sacrament (1 Cor 11:29), and Our Lord teaches us that it is not enough merely to be in close physical proximity to him as mere bystanders “hanging around.” We must follow him and conform our wills to his.