Here’s the Catch.

Raised in a Protestant church that taught we are saved by grace alone, I grew up believing there was nothing I could do to change or improve my spiritual condition. I’d been baptized; I believed; that was all there was to it. But somehow that didn’t satisfy—I was sure there had to be more. After converting to Catholicism in my early forties, I finally found the missing piece: the verse about the narrow gate and how difficult it is to go through it. I realized I’d been what theologian Dallas Willard calls a “bar-code Christian”—one who holds all the right beliefs without ever taking the first step on the hard road.

But how do we even start? Jesus tells us very clearly: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” The narrow path is the path of loving obedience. In order to truly be his followers, we must live as Jesus taught and do the things he did.

In other words, we are to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds. We are to care about our neighbor as much as we care about ourselves. We are to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and care for the sick and visit those in prison. We are to forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven. We are to reconcile with people we have hurt. We are not to retaliate when we have been wounded. We are to be faithful to our spouses and treat them with respect. We are to tell the truth: to mean yes when we say yes, and no when we say no. We are to give generously to those who ask us for help. We are to love our enemies. And here’s the catch: we are to do all this extremely hard work quietly, humbly, and anonymously.

A very narrow path indeed. No wonder it took me so long to find it.

Paula Huston. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Paula Huston is a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate and the author of two novels and seven works of spiritual nonfiction. Her most recent book is One Ordinary Sunday: A Meditation on the Mystery of the Mass.