Daily Gospel Reflection
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August 3, 2023
Jesus said to the disciples:
“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.
The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous
and throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
“Do you understand all these things?”
They answered, “Yes.”
And he replied,
“Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven
is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom
both the new and the old.”
When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.
During my junior year at Notre Dame, I was at last able to hear the call home to Mother Church. As I fell in love with Christ more deeply, my entire world was transformed. I described the transition as if somebody had finally allowed me to see the world in color, as if everything had been inverted and flipped right side up and finally set aright.
After my confirmation, I decided to add a theology major to supplement my environmental engineering degree. Since then, my mind has been stimulated, my soul transformed, and my heart set on fire.
One thing I learned in class is that Matthew’s Gospel wants to make the “scribes fit for the kingdom of heaven,” who are able to understand the continuity of the new with the old. I’ve studied the events, ideas, and writings of ages that seem so glorious and triumphant in the Church’s history. But what Matthew has helped me to understand is that wherever we find ourselves caught up in the net of the kingdom of God, the story is one and the same.
The same God, who called Abraham, Moses, and David, the same God who came in the power of the Holy Spirit, who called St Francis and Mother Theresa, this God is among us now, and we’re just as much a part of his story as anyone was in any age.
All of us are called to be scribes fit for the kingdom of heaven, to bring forth the treasures of God’s presence among us, and to set our world on fire once again. We must not leave it to only theologians, priests, and religious to know our faith; we should rather engage deeply with our faith tradition so that we might understand more deeply the continuous narrative of the good news of God’s reign throughout history and get caught up in it as it continues to happen even now.
Prayer
Almighty Father, you know the secrets of our hearts and, therefore, you know that we, too, are capable of doing good and ill. You even know those faults that we hide from others and those which we try to hide from ourselves. Despite this, you never fail to call us to greater heights of goodness and of love. You chose to live among us as one of us in order to raise us up. Grant that our hearts may be made new so that we might enter into your kingdom. We ask this through you son, our Lord. Amen.