Like A Dragnet

Thursday,
August 1, 2013
17th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading: Ex 40:16-21, 34-38 Gospel:
Matthew 13:47-53

Jesus said to his disciples, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a big fishing net let down into the sea, in which every kind of fish has been caught. When the net is full, it is dragged ashore. Then they sit down and gather the good fish in buckets, but throw the worthless ones away. That is how it will be at the end of time; the angels will go out to separate the wicked from the just and throw them into the blazing furnace, where they will weep and gnash their teeth.”

Jesus asked, “Have you understood all these things?” “Yes,” they answered. So he said to them, “You will see that every teacher of the Law who becomes a disciple of the Kingdom is like a householder who can produce from his store things both new and old.”

D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE (Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)

Gospel readings about the kingdom are better understood side by side Luke 17:21 where Jesus said to the Pharisees: “The Kingdom of God is within you”. The original Greek used for “within you” is “entos hymon” which can also mean “in your midst”. Jesus must have used the second meaning, for why would he tell the Pharisees that the kingdom of heaven was within them when he knew what was in their hearts? “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like unto whitened sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” (Matt. 23:27). The way Jesus described their inner dispositions he couldn’t have told the Pharisees that the kingdom of God was within them. What Jesus really meant was that the kingdom of God was in their midst.

By saying that the kingdom of God was in their midst, Jesus was inviting them to look around and see that the blind recovered their sight, the lame walked, lepers were cured, the deaf heard, the dead were raised back to life, and the good news was preached to the poor (Matthew 11:5). The kingdom of God became a reality by what Jesus was doing. In other words the kingdom was not a sentimental creation of the heart or a fiction of the mind but a reality. This explains why the parables Jesus used in explaining the kingdom were related to human experiences about the ground (parable of the weeds growing side by side with the wheat), air (birds of the air taking shelter on a tree that sprouts from a small seed such as mustard) and sea (today’s parable of the fishing net).

We too can experience the kingdom of God in this lifetime. The only requisite is that we continue to do the works of Christ today. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website:www.frdan.org.
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