Lord, will only a few people be saved? What is our understanding of salvation? To the most part, and rightly so, we understand salvation as the reconciliatory relationship between God and creation that has been made possible through Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18, 19). We refer to Jesus as our Savior and redeemer because by his self-offering on the wood of the cross, he has rescued us from eternal damnation and given us the opportunity to once again be called sons and daughters of God. To put it another way, Jesus gave his life so that we can have life. It is an understanding that makes salvation a consequence of the fall of Adam and Eve: Jesus Christ assumed our creaturely nature in order to save us from eternal death that was occasioned by the fall of our first parents. While it is true that we cannot dissociate our understating of salvation from the rebellion of Adam and Eve and its consequences, it is also true that salvation is a concept that precedes the fall. 
Salvation was not necessitated by the fall of humanity from grace but was rather the plan of God from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, salvation (understood as remaining in a relationship with the Creator) was the goal of the creative process. God did not foresee a creation that would become disobedient so much so as to choose death over life and by doing so necessitate, as it were, “redemption.” Rather, God intended creation to eternally abide in the life-giving relationship that ought to exist between creatures and their Creator (eternal life). In other words, God saw a creation that would stay the course and return back to its origin, that is, to its Creator. It is this return that constitutes salvation.
Salvation (understood as the return of creation back to its Creator, God), was designed by God to be the goal of creation since it is only in this return that the process of creation becomes complete (God created us to know him, love him, serve him, and to forever be happy with him in heaven). Jesus himself could not emphasize enough the importance of every creature making this return back to God: “It is never the will of my Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost” (cf. Mathew 18:14); “The will of the Father is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me…” (cf. John 6:39). 
It is safe to presume that the question regarding salvation about which we hear in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading was not meant as a test to Jesus. The individual who asked the question must have been genuinely interested in what Jesus was going to say. Just like us who struggle with the concept of salvation due to its various interpretations that we come across every now and then, the individual who asked the question must have found himself at crossroads. As his framing of the question suggests, his long-held belief appears to have been under siege by the new teaching from Jesus. The individual must have found himself in a situation similar to ours when the words of consecration were changed from “ Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood…the blood that will be shed for you and for all…” to “ Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood…that will be shed for many…” By asking the question, the guy might have just wanted Jesus to shed some light into the grey areas that were beginning to form around the concept of salvation due to Jesus’ new teaching.
At the time of Jesus, salvation was a concept that was restricted/reserved to the elect people/nation of Israel. It was a term that could not be applied to any other people because it was somehow synonymous to Israel’s election. It was an understanding that had been in existence for as long as the people could remember, and any thought of revising it was out of the question. But all this changed when Jesus began teaching that in him, God’s salvation had been made accessible to all, Jews and non-Jews alike. It was a teaching that had some serious ramification for both the Jewish and non-Jewish audiences of Jesus, even if in differing ways. For those who belonged to the elected nation, it was a teaching that perhaps needed to be met with some caution. For those listeners of Jesus who were of Gentile background, it was an offer that could not be resisted. If the individual who posed the question was of Jewish background, he wanted to ensure that Jesus was not leading him away from his privileged status. And if he was of Gentile background, he wanted to make sure that Jesus was not giving them false hopes. In his answer, Jesus re-affirmed his earlier teaching on the accessibility of God’s salvation to all. 
The individual who asked the question might have just wanted a simple YES or NO answer from Jesus. However, that is not what he got. In his usual manner of answering questions, Jesus took the opportunity to lead those gathered about him into the secret of ensuring that they benefited from the accessibility to salvation that he was making available to all. For even as Jesus affirmed through his teachings that the will of God is that all should be saved (“It is the Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should  be saved” [cf. John 6:40]), it is also true that in this post-fall world, salvation has become a journey that must be voluntarily made. God cannot force us to do something that we do not want, let alone attain our salvation. God has made salvation available to us, but we have to reach out and grasp it. We do this when we follow and heed the voice of he who was sent to guide us back into the  salvific orbit, Jesus Christ .