The Fewness of the Saved
Gospel Reflection for October 30, 2024
Today’s Gospel is a hard one. It is very easy to hear its words and to fall into despair of salvation. Certainly, many have and it has caused them to alter what the Church has taught considering the number of the elect. Our Lord gives a grave warning to the inquires:
“Jesus passed through towns and villages, teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, will only a few people be saved?" He answered them, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.” Luke 13:22-24
This is a question that has occupied the minds of countless theologians throughout the history of the Catholic Church. Some, like St. Augustine1 and many of the Church Fathers and Doctors, opt for a fewer number of the saved. Contrary to that, there are some theologians on the opposite side of the spectrum who advocate for the condemned proposition of apokatastasis, that is, universal salvation or some variation of a fewness of the damned.
The spectrum of possibilities is indeed wide, but the question asked of Our Lord is bluntly answered by Him:
“Strive to enter by the narrow gate…”
This is not a compromised answer. Our Lord answers honestly and bluntly that the path to heaven lies through a narrow gate to which man will attempt to enter but will not be able to. As hard as this is to hear, I want to flesh this belief out so that the reader might understand the subtlety of this teaching.
To begin, the first thing that we have to accept is that God does not owe anyone salvation. It is purely a movement of His gratuitous love and mercy that anyone is saved. The immensity of God’s love is seen in this. He is not required to bring us into that glorious vision, just as He was not required to send His Son to redeem us. Both our redemption and our potential salvation are purely gratuitous.
The second, God gives to all what is called sufficient grace. What this basically means is that God gives to all the necessary grace to get them to heaven, that means the potential for salvation, poured out from the cross, is offered to all. This means, is a potential sense, all could be saved. This is an immensely important doctrine because it teaches us two things:
1. Man cannot by his own means attain heaven. Thus, sufficient grace is absolutely necessary for salvation. Thus, no one in heaven can say that they got there themselves.
2. For man to be damned, he must reject the sufficient grace that was offered. Thus, anyone who is damned cannot say that God did not sufficiently help him or that there was no antecedent and general will for their salvation. Essentially, the damned cannot blame God for their damnation.
These two points are essentially summarized as the elect are in heaven because of God’s goodness and the damned are in hell because of their fault. We cannot get to heaven without God and we do not go to hell against our will.
To this end, drawing from St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange comments on the number of the saved:
“St. Thomas remarked on several occasions that although everything is ordered for good in the universe as a whole, and in the different species, yet if we consider the human race from the time of original sin, evil is more prevalent in this sense, the those who follow the sense and their passions are greater in number than those who follow right reason.”2
Garrigou delivers what should be an obvious truth, there are far greater of a number of those who live a life contrary to the Gospel and do great evil in the world than those who deny themselves the pleasures of the flesh and strive for the Kingdom. To the mind of St. Thomas, that shows in a practical way the fewness of the saved.
For Garrigou-Lagrange and the Thomistic tradition, the overwhelming opinion is that there is a fewer number saved than damned but that of those numbers, those with access to the sacraments make up the majority of the saved, this is because of access to sanctifying grace and the grace of a provided death. But passed this, we cannot arrive at a number. The number is known only to God. What we can say with the Council of Trent is that God never commands the impossible. This means that for the devout soul who desires to be with God, leaning on His grace, it is possible to attain salvation.
To this end, Garrigou sums up this question in a very important way. If you take anything from this, let it be this:
“We cannot arrive at a certitude in this question. It is better to acknowledge our ignorance than to discourage the faithful by a doctrine which is too rigid, or to expose them to danger by a doctrine which is too superficial… Let us put our confidence in Jesus Christ, ‘the victim of propitiation for our sins,’ ‘the lamb of God,… who taketh away the sin of the world.’ ‘Let us go with confidence to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid.”3
Place your trust in God’s mercy. He desires your salvation and does not command the impossible. Strive to enter by the narrow gate. Those who do will be able to pass through it only by God’s grace. Truly, that is the lesson of the day. We are absolutely reliant on God’s grace. It is only through that grace that we will be able to pass through the narrow gate.
Sermon 61.
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 218.
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Life Everlasting and the Immensity of the Soul, 203.
It's so very hard when family of the deceased person says "They are back together again", "She is much happier now", "He's an angel in Heaven now", etc. when I know that there are very few who get to Heaven at the moment of death. Nothing/no one imperfect can enter Heaven, and therefore, Purgatory cleans the soul prior to entering Heaven. I never say anything because I don't want to hurt their feelings as they are already grieving, but I wish our priests/bishops/Pope would talk about this more so people know what actually happens. +JMJ+
One thing that should give us hope, is that all the pain and suffering of Christ's Passion was poured out for each of us, as individuals. God desire's eternal communion with each of us so much that He would have undergone all of it, even if we were the only ones who would be saved by it. If we can each come even remotely close to matching God's desire for us, I have a reasonable hope that all will be well.