Seventeenth Sunday of the Year

Each year in our home there was an event that was equivalent to ‘taking out of the storeroom things old and new.’ Every summer on our long school holidays we would empty the garage, hall cupboard and attic for the annual airing of the ‘could be handy someday’ items. My parents grew up in the war years and the rationing era, so nothing would go to waste. There would be an inspection of the laid out items, a longing in our eyes that something might finally see the bin, but also the ‘we’ll wait for your father to come home to decide’. The last mission was to fit everything back the way we found them and close the bulging doors.

 

My parents would sometimes throw an eye over the piling junk in a neighbour’s skip and invariably something might catch their eye and we might be mortified and be instructed to pick something out. So much so that there would be an ever increasing pile of ‘you-never-know’ second hand furniture, bicycle parts, lawn mowers and heaven knows what.

 

Another adventure awaited us when that ‘someday’ would arrive and we would be sent to fetch the buried treasure! ‘It’s got to be there somewhere’ is another comment that sends shivers down my back as we would be sent back on the thankless task of retrieving the urgently needed missing ‘someday’ item’!

 

The Gospel is very much a ‘sorting out’ theme, and whereas last week it was the land, now Jesus focuses on the sea as the source of parables. There is a final decision, a final weeding out process. And unlike a job interview process or audition, there is something very final being alluded to today, as on the Last Day there are no more opportunities to make up for any faults. This does not sit well with us in a modern culture of second chances.

 

We do not like being told ‘no’, or you can’t, or you mustn’t, or else’.

It is always a very instructive process to ask someone preparing for marriage – on their own - among the questions in the Pre Marriage forms (known as Pre Nuptial Enquiry Forms).

Are you intent on entering a marriage that can only be dissolved by death?

Do you understand that marriage is a lifelong commitment to love and support each other?

 

There is usually at least one gulp, and that is reassuring, as it is a necessary wake up moment. The vows mean to say something before God and mean it, permanently and irreversibly.

 

That gives us a different slant in life, that there are certain decisions that we must live with, for good (and sometimes for ill). There are cold realities where the consequences must be thought through, and sometimes aren’t when we get caught up in the heat of the moment.

 

The parable of the sorting out of fish – those that are of value, commercially and nutritionally, from those that are poor value and not particularly attractive or pleasing, maybe too small or what have you, is an image given to us today to a permanent lasting judgment. The angels are portrayed as the fish sorters, some 'fish' (i.e., us) go to their reward and others are set aside. Heaven and hell, as a reward for faith, virtue and generosity on one hand, and punishment for vice, evil choices and selfishness on the other.

 

The choice is ours and we are already making it. It is not too late for us now to make the decision to repent and find our way to salvation. We have been duly warned. We have the freedom that the Father gives us, because He wants a free loving response made in faith and trust and obedience to His Will to make the right choices every day.

 

Are we listening?