Word to the Wise
Thursday, July 28, 2022 - Thursday in the 18th Week in Ordinary Time
[Jer 31:31-34 and Matt 16:13-23]"Rise up, be off to the potter's house; there I will give you my message. I went down to the potter's house and there he was, working at the wheel. Whenever the object of clay which he was making turned out badly in his hand, he tried again, making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased. [Jeremiah] 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. Thus it will be at the end of the age. [Matthew]
Two wonderful images from Jeremiah and Matthew are presented to us today. I'll start with the gospel image and a story. I was preaching a retreat for Brothers of the Sacred Heart who have some schools in the south. They had the policy of inviting staff members from their schools to join them on their retreat. The retreat model they asked for involved preaching on the scriptures of the day at Morning Prayer and then at Mass in the afternoon with an optional sharing session in the evening. The gospel of the day was the one we have today with the image of the dragnet of fish. A staff member from one of the high schools in Mississippi spoke about her uncle, a commercial fisherman who commented that his Vietnamese competitors (there are many Vietnamese immigrants on the gulf coast from the days of the Vietnam War) kept everything they caught instead of picking out certain fish and throwing away the others as the uncle would. The staff member said, "I find myself wishing God is Vietnamese!" There is a "fisherman's prayer that my dad, an ardent weekend fisherman, kept by his bed, which ends with the plea that "I be big enough to keep!" It was read at his funeral!
The second image, the potter and the clay, reminds me of a T-shirt with the words, "Be patient with me. God is not done with me yet!" The potter in Jeremiah's image is able to reshape the clay if it isn't responding for whatever reason. The skill and persistence of the potter makes the difference, but he also has to contend with the makeup of the clay!!
Yes, there is an ultimate judgment, but God's mercy and grace are always present before that time if we allow ourselves to accept it. AMEN