The words "many are called, but few are chosen" are often perceived as an assertion of a certain elitism. However, if we look more carefully at the parable, we can notice something else. The feast was prepared for...
The words "many are called, but few are chosen" are often perceived as an assertion of a certain elitism. However, if we look more carefully at the parable, we can notice something else. The feast was prepared for a certain number of guests who refused to come. Others were invited in their place, and their number was probably about the same. But then still more guests were called, which means that, on the contrary, there turned out to be even more chosen ones than those originally called. Perhaps this visible contradiction is what troubled the evangelist Matthew and prompted him to add the episode about expulsion from among the chosen.
But we know that when we speak of a visible contradiction, the matter concerns some important message for us. Let us remember the words: "The servant said, 'Sir, what you commanded has been done, and there is still room.'" It seems to us that in these words, "there is still room," there is some very important indication that no matter how desperate a condition we may be in, no matter how much it may seem to us that now "the pit will close its mouth over me" (Ps 68:16), there is always this hope that "there is still room," and there really is.
And still this strict refrain sounds: many are called, few are chosen. Yes, but who said that strictness is bad? Strictness is good right up to that very line beyond which depression, despair, despondency, and so on begin in the person to whom strictness is applied. At that point strictness must urgently be changed to tenderness.
Of course, one must sense that a person is at the line. No human being is capable of this, however much we may encourage ourselves with our emotional sensitivity. But "what is impossible for people is possible for God." And He always places boundless kindness beside strictness. Then He needs to tune a person's heart to perceive one or the other, depending on the state that person is in. And He always succeeds well at this if the person loves Him.
