From The Holy Gospel according to Matthew (Mt13:47-53)
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.
The Gospel of The Lord.
“They Keep the good ones; bad ones shoot”
Jesus’ opinion on good and evil is clear and forceful. We humans are always in the hands of God. We can follow him, we can go in other directions, but we should not lose sight of the fact that good fish are put in baskets; bad fish are simply thrown away.
Those of us who live in seafaring environments are accustomed to the image of unloading fishing boats. We see how they take the catch from their holds, how it is distributed in boxes according to size and type of fish and how the unfit fish return to the sea, to the great uproar of the seagulls. This seems to be the image that Jesus presents to us today: the good go to paradise; the bad to the fire.
It is difficult for us if we take this literally. Fortunately, as Jeremiah told us in the first reading, the Potter is always ready to take up the damaged clay, the one that has gone wrong or has gone wrong at some point, and start a new pot, a new person reborn, beautiful and perfect again, and if he fails again, because he made us free to make mistakes, and we are fragile clay, he will start the task again as many times as necessary, because what interests him, what he wants, is for us all to be saved.
With this Jesus concludes a series of parables that in this chapter 13, begin with the sower, continue with the weeds, the mustard seed, the yeast in the dough, the treasure and the pearl found, and finish with this one about the net. These are teachings about the Kingdom that we should not forget. We can see in them, in all of them, the idea that Jesus wants to convey to us about the Kingdom of God: God is not always angry, ready to punish our deviations, but, with his compassionate gaze, seeking our good, remaking the vessel as many times as necessary, so that, despite our faults, we can achieve his favor.
