The Narrow Road to Heaven

Lessons from the Saints

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The road to Heaven is not the road of the world. It is the road of humility, prayer, self-denial, courage, and perseverance in the love of God. The lives of the saints show us this clearly. They did not seek comfort, praise, or the approval of men. They sought God above all things.

Flee the Spirit of the World

“The atmosphere of the world is noxious and pestilential. Whoever breathes it easily catches spiritual infection. Human respect, bad examples, and evil conversations are powerful incitements to earthly attachments and to estrangement of the soul from God. Everyone knows that the damnation of numberless souls is attributable to the occasions of sin so common in the world.”Saint Alphonsus

“Friendship of the world is the enemy of God.”James 4:4

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you are of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”Jesus Christ — John 15

Seeking the approval of others, or glory from men, is a primary reason that countless people do not receive the grace of faith or fall into heresy, as Jesus taught in John chapter 5.

“He who desires to consecrate himself to God must, in the first place, trample under his feet all regard for what others will say of him.”Saint Francis Borgia

The Fear of God and Humility

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”Proverbs 9:10

Humility is foundational to the spiritual life.

“He who would gather virtue without humility carries dust against the wind.”Pope Saint Gregory the Great

“The first degree of humility, then, is that a man always has the fear of God before his eyes, shunning all forgetfulness, and that he is ever mindful of all that God has commanded; that he always considers in his mind how those who despise God will burn in hell for their sins, and that life everlasting is prepared for those who fear God.”Saint Benedict

“In every deed and every word, have before your eyes the judgment of Christ, so that every individual action, being referred to that exact and awful examination, may bring you glory in the days of retribution.”Saint Basil

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light.”Jesus Christ — Matthew 6:22

Detachment and the Cross

“Neither can a soul preoccupied with the cares of this life and darkened with the passions of the lust of the flesh receive the rays of the Holy Ghost.”Saint Basil

“Someone who does not renounce all that he has cannot be Jesus’ disciple.”Luke 14:33

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”Jesus Christ — Luke 14

This means that love for one’s family must be secondary to one’s love and duty toward God.

Prayer, Mortification, and Solitude

“Prayer introduces the love of God into the soul, but mortification prepares a place for it by banishing from the heart earthly affections, the most powerful obstacles of charity.”Saint Francis Borgia

“Prayer without mortification is either an illusion or lasts but a short time.”Father Baltasar Alvarez

“All the reprobate have been damned in consequence of their neglect of prayer. Had they prayed, they would not be lost; and all the saints have become saints by prayer. Had they neglected prayer, they would not have become saints. We must live in the persuasion, Saint John Chrysostom says, that to neglect prayer and to lose the grace of God are one and the same thing.”Saint Alphonsus

“There is no duty which Christ and His Apostles more emphatically urged by both precept and example than that of prayer and supplication to the Almighty. The Fathers and the Doctors in subsequent times have taught that this is a matter of such grave necessity that if men neglect it, they hope in vain for eternal salvation.”Saint Pope Leo XIII

“Ask, seek, and knock.”Matthew 7:7

“Whoever loves God loves solitude. There the Lord communicates Himself in a more familiar manner to souls, because there He finds them less entangled in worldly affairs and more detached from earthly affections. Saint Eucharius relates that a certain man, desirous of becoming a saint, asked a servant of God where he should find God. The servant conducted him to a solitary place and said, ‘Behold where God is found.’”Saint Alphonsus

Resolve, Fortitude, and Perseverance

“If you neglect God’s call on this occasion, He may perhaps abandon you forever. Resolve, then, resolve.”Saint Alphonsus

The devil, says Saint Teresa, is afraid of resolute souls.

Saint Bernard teaches that many souls are lost through want of fortitude.

“Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day. For His wrath shall come on a sudden, and in the time of vengeance He will destroy you.”Ecclesiasticus 5

If a person decides to live properly and is consistent in doing so, he or she will find a happiness previously unimagined and will discover that living the life of grace is easy, not burdensome.

“For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.”Jesus Christ

“Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset, but as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.”Saint Benedict

“There is no lack in these days of captious listeners and questioners, but to find a character desirous of information and seeking the truth as a remedy for ignorance is very difficult.”Saint Basil

What we have lost.