I am the door (Jn 10:7). What does it mean to enter by Christ? It means to imitate the ways of Christ. How are we to imitate the ways of Christ? In the greatness by which he was God in the flesh? Is this what he exhorts us to do, demands of us, that we perform the kinds of wonders that he himself did? And does not our Lord Jesus Christ now and always with the Father govern the entire world? Is this what he calls people to do, making them imitators of himself, that with him they may govern heaven and earth and everything in them? Or that they themselves be the creator through whom all things are made, just as through Christ were all things made? It is not to these works that our Savior God, our Lord Jesus Christ, is inviting you, ... nor to the works that he did on earth. He doesn’t say to you, “You will not be my disciple unless you walk on the sea or unless you awaken a man dead for four days, or unless you open the eyes of a man born blind. No, not this. What, then, does it means to enter by the door? “Learn from me because I am gentle and lowly of heart” (Mt 11:29). To imitate him it’s what he became for your sake that you must consider.  (EnPs 90[91], 1; PL 1149-50)

Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

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