Today’s reading is exactly the same as the reading on 17th Sunday. It is the Gospel of Matthew about the fishermen, dragnet, furnace, good fishes and bad fishes. I ranted about not being able to relate to the Gospel reading in last Sunday’s homily.
But today, I get it. The priest said that we must not only focus on the furnace and the burning part but also the dragnet which is akin to the church. It pulls in everything, the good, the bad, the ugly and the pretty, every kind of people.
Then, the priest referred to the encouraging words from prophet Jeremiah about the potter and the clay.
3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. (Jeremiah 18)
It is a message of hope, he said. And I like the concept of not being in one constant spot where we are all holy or we are totally condemned. I like the idea of having the second chance always because our God is a forgiving and loving God. And we have to remind ourselves that we also have to give others the second chance and not totally write them off, with our holy-moly self-righteous airs.
After mass, someone jokingly told me, “The (censored) is too preoccupied with who is going to hell and who is going to heaven.” I told him I am pushing for this party to see the big picture of their preaching on building God’s kingdom so I hope they will listen to me. I know I am a nobody, I do not have anything to offer, I do not carry any promises. But if they are faithful and believe in God’s promises and all those verses that they probably know by heart, then, I believe they have to give me a chance (and some moolah). And that’s when someone retorted with the above sentence. Well, we shall see. See if they are only counting the heads that will be condemned to hell or they are going to believe that we are one big dragnet and only God Himself will be the fisherman.
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