Opening

If the gate is narrow it seems counterintuitive to suggest, as some do, that one reaches it through inner opening.  But isn't "opening" is just that going beyond, that endeavoring to pass through the gate to experience the presence beyond?  Here is how one pastor describes the implications of openness to presence:

'Compassion' is the final operative word to define what the way of presence really means.  it sums up the listening, responsive, agonizing receptivity of the prophet and the poet.  For it is impossible to be open and sensitive in one direction without being open to all.  If a man would open his heart towards his fellow he must keep it open to all other comers -- to the stranger, to the dead, to the enchanting and awful presences of nature, to powers of beauty and terror, to the pain and anxiety of men, to the menace and catastrophe of our time, and to the overwhelming presence of God . . . . To present oneself to God means to expose oneself, in an intense and vulnerable awareness, not only to him but to all that is.  And this is what, apart from Christ, we dare not do.  Presence is too much for us to face.

From The Primal Vision, John Taylor, p. 191, quoted in Edward Robinson, The Language of Mystery, Edward Robinson, p. 100.

So I suggest that that 'narrow way' is the way few choose for fear of the consequences of opening up, a reality that is overwhelming, grief-laden, too much . . . except in the company of Christ, whose love is the only power that can embrace and lift up (to life) the grief and sorrow and suffering we find there.  Yet the narrow way is the only way because it is only there that Christ is found, waiting for us.

Christ is there because he preceded us there, eternally.  His identity (flowing from His Trinitarian nature) was solely to do the will of His Father.  His will opened Him totally and at the same time emptied Him of his own disparate will.  Total openness narrowed him such that "all despised him as a no-account" even to ignominious death on a cross.

Remembering Christ, let us us imitate His openness and move toward the narrow gate, and pass through it to find ourselves in the arms of Christ who awaits us in love.