The Narrow Gate

The Narrow Gate is the story of a once award-winning newspaper man’s investigation into the dramatic rise and fall of a very young but very powerful US senator who becomes involved in a scandal marked by adultery, divorce, the death of his son, and fraud on a major public charity run by a nun who was his high school principal.

Although he fails spectacularly and experiences the depths of suffering and alienation, his old high school principal does not abandon him and helps him find redemption by helping others rather than just himself. Most men die the way they have lived, but our senator does not. He learns to shed his old skin and emerge as a hero. But while he loses his life in the process, he also saves it, as well as his soul, as he proves it is never too late to change and find redemption. He finds his way through the narrow gate.

At the deepest level, it is a story about the existence and depth of God’s mercy and the meaning of suffering. Why is there injustice and suffering in the world? Yet the mercy of God intersects with suffering and injustice, and this conflict between the existence of suffering and injustice on the one hand and mercy on the other hand is one of the deepest mysteries and conflicts we all face in our lives. The heroes in this story are no exception.