Jesus doesn't barge in on us

I hope you took the time to read New York's new Archbishop Timothy Dolan's homily from the Vespers liturgy at St. Patrick's Cathedral a couple of days ago. If you did, you'll recall these lines:

One of my favorite illustrations of Jesus is the familiar one of Him standing outside the door of a simple home, gently knocking. In second grade at Holy Infant School in Ballwin, Missouri, my teacher, Sister Mary Bosco Daly, who this evening, fresh from Ireland, just read our scripture passage from St. Peter, asked us to look closely at that picture and see if we noticed anything strange. “Yes,” Carolyn Carey finally raised her hand and blurted out, “there is no door knob!”


“Right,” observed Sister Bosco, “because Jesus cannot open up and barge in on His own. He patiently waits for us to open the door of our hearts and invite Him in to stay with us.”
...

Because that’s the ultimate question, in the end the only one that really counts: will we open up in faith, hope, and love to the God who gently knocks on the door to our being, asking Him in to live with us? Or will fear, self- absorption, and darkness keep us locked up in ourselves?

The Church is at her best, faithful to her mission, when she invites people to open the door and ask Jesus in. That’s precisely the invitation this Archdiocese of New York extends; that’s the proposal the Church makes to the world...

Dolan references here the painting The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt (above). H/T to Mollie Wilson O'Reilly over at dotCommonweal for the graphic. (Click on the image above for a larger version)

-ConcordPastor