Word to the Wise
Thursday, August 1, 2024 - Thursday in the 17th Week in Ordinary Time
[Jer 18:1-6 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. Thus it will be at the end of the age." [Matthew]
AUGUST 1, ST. ALPHONSUS LIGOURI cssr
I was once giving a retreat to some Brothers of the Sacred Heart at a retreat house in MIssissippi. They had the custom of inviting staff members from the high schools they staffed in Mississippi and Louisiana to join them on retreat. The retreat model required preaching on the scriptures of the day as the only input by the director. In the evening there would be an optional session where the retreatants could share their own insights into those scriptures. The gospel of the day was the one for today - the Kingdom of heaven compared to a dragnet. A female staff member spoke about her uncle who was a commercial fisherman out of Biloxi. His "competitors" were mostly Vietnamese fishermen who had emigrated to the USA during the Vietnam War. He noted that he kept only those fish that he would sell. The Vietnamese fishermen kept all that they caught! She expressed the hope that God is Vietnamese!!!
The Gospel According to Matthew recalls Jesus' teaching about last judgment "at the end of the age." [cf. especially 25:31-45]. There will be an ultimate accounting for our lives and actions. We are called to live our lives in the light of that ultimate judgment. Perhaps our prayer might be the one my dad, an avid weekend fisherman, kept on the wall by his bed: "When in the Lord's great landing net, and peacefully asleep, that in his mercy I be judged big enough to keep." AMEN
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