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Steadfast Love

Writer's picture: Immersed in ChristImmersed in Christ

by Fr. David M. Knight


August 1, 2024

Thursday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time  

Memorial of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church  

Lectionary 404 

Jer 18:1-6/Mt 13:47-53


Jeremiah 18:1-6 reminds us of something we tend to forget: our total, absolute dependence on God’s will—at every moment—just to continue to exist. If God stopped actively choosing, just for a second, to will us into existence, we would simply cease to be. In place of what we were, there would be nothing. Nothing at all. 

 

We are not just “like clay in the hand of the potter.” All the potter does is shape the clay. If he throws away what he has made, the clay still exists. But we are clay that depends on the potter for its very existence. If he decides that what we are isn’t worth making, we revert to being nothing at all. 

 

A parenthesis: Some people put drastic limits on the intellect by claiming there is no certitude except in “scientific knowledge,” by which they mean, essentially, technology: knowledge of the causes of how things work. When they leave their field and step into philosophy—knowledge of the causes of what things are—they make fools of themselves. Using the “big bang” theory to explain creation without God, they forget that they are only proposing the beginning of a process, not explaining the product. Something had to exist to go “bang,” and they don’t explain that. 

 

God is also the “potter” of the Church. He shaped and formed it. If the Church gets so “out of shape” that it is no longer what God formed it to be, it is “no longer good for anything,” because it is like salt that “has lost its taste” (Jesus’ words) and can be “thrown out.” 

 

We have Jesus’ word that this will never happen. The essence of God is to be “steadfast love,” love that endures. But we have no guarantee that the Church will not decline so much in a particular place that it hardly exists there; or so much in a particular time that it can no longer retain its members or attract new ones. This makes the quality of ministry in the Church something that should concern us all. And we all are consecrated by Baptism to minister. 

 

In Matthew 13:47-53 Jesus recognizes that in the “Kingdom of heaven,” which on earth is made visible in the Church, there are “rotten” members, even ministers. This should not surprise us. We just have to be on guard. 

 

Don’t judge the Church by the present moment. If wise, we will look at both “the new and the old.” 

 

Initiative: Don’t trust every minister. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” 


Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry




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