Lord, will only a few people be saved? Jesus must have said something that elicited such a question from one of those who were listening to him. It is a question that we too must have had when the words we were used to hear during the consecration ( 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…) was changed to  Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood…that will be shed for many. We are told that the question arose as Jesus was doing his rounds of teaching in the villages. From the passages that precede today’s reading, we learn that the content of Jesus’ teachings included membership in the kingdom of God. Ordinarily, Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom always challenged his hearers to a re-evaluation of their stand in order to see where they stood vis-à-vis the kingdom. 
While we have come to associate salvation with redemption/deliverance (after the Fall), it is a concept that precedes the Fall. Salvation was not necessitated by the fall of humanity from grace but was rather the goal of creation. God did not foresee a creation that would become disobedient so much so as to choose death over life. On the contrary, God saw a creation that would stay the course in order to fulfill the goal of creation (returning back to its creator).  
The return of creation back to God, the creator (salvation), was designed by God to be the goal of creation because only in this return is the process of creation complete (cf.  Baltimore Catechism: 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 everybody making this return to God: “It is never the will of your 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). Paul clearly understood this when he reminded Timothy and the Christian community in Ephesus that God’s will is that everyone be saved (cf. I Timothy 2:4). 
God’s will is that ALL should be saved. How we wish Jesus’ answer would have been straightforward as that. Rather than a simple YES or NO, Jesus took the opportunity to lead those gathered about him into the secret of attaining salvation: “Make sure you are on the right side when the master of the house locks the door.” God’s will is that all should be saved, but it appears that will not be the case (or that has not been the case). In this  Supralapsarian world (the world after the Fall), salvation has become a journey that must be made. It has become a target that must be acquired. This can only take place when one follows he who was sent to guide us back into the  salvific orbit, Jesus Christ . “It is the Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should  be saved…” says Jesus (John 6:40). But one can see the Son and still not believe in him (cf. John 6:36). Such a person will only have him/herself to blame.