Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In the first two parables of today’s Mass, Christ teaches me that living the Christian life does not mean I must reject whatever is human. Rather, I must learn to put a price tag on every thing. Can I afford to make this good my own? Will that good help or hinder me from living the Christian life? Faith is the virtue that gives me the eye to discern.
The lesson in parable of the net thrown into the sea is the same that Christ taught about separating the wheat from the chaff. Faith invites me to be realistic. It is normal for me to find in myself and in others the good mixed up with the bad, the valuable with the cheesy.
To refuse to see the world as it is, is to refuse to accept the invitation Christ gives to me to be a collaborator – a co-worker – in his work of salvation, He did not come to the world to condemn, but to save. Wanting to save the world with him does not mean to reject the world, but to accept it with confidence and to educate it with patience.
Today I shall ask Christ to increase my faith and to preserve me from a false notion of the Benedict Option.