Word to the Wise
Thursday, August 1, 2013 - Thursday in the 17th Week in Ordinary Time
[Exod 40:16-21, 34-38 and Matt 13:47-53]The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2013 ST. ALPHONSUS LIGOURI, cssr, bishop, doctor of the church and founder of the Redemptorists
I once gave a retreat for some Brothers of the Sacred Heart. They had the laudable custom of inviting staff members from their high schools in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to attend the retreat as well. The style of the retreat called for all the preaching to be done on the scriptures given for the day - in other words, no "conferences" of the usual sort on particular topics. [I LOVE this kind of "preaching retreat!] In the evening there would be an optional "sharing" session in which retreatants could speak about how the scriptures or preaching had touched them. The retreat was about this time of year and the gospel for today was the gospel on one of the retreat days.
A woman staff member came to the evening session and told a story about her uncle who was a fisherman working out of Biloxi. He had a number of competitors who were originally from Vietnam. One day he was noting to his niece how the Vietnamese, in contrast to the
"Anglo" fishermen, kept everything they caught. The Anglos would sort them out and throw away the "trash fish." The lady concluded her story by saying, "I find myself hoping God is Vietnamese!" To her story I can only say, "AMEN!"