Change

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. Matthew 13:47-53

Reflection:

Since Jesus' time we have lived our lives as if we will always have a new day to see. Yet in today's Gospel he warns of how we live our life and how we will all be separated according to how well we did or not did at the end of the age.

This reminds me of a time when I was a kid, and during recess we were to pick teams. Anyone ever go through this? While standing in a row and waiting, was to put it mildly quite nerve wracking, unless you were popular, you knew you would be chosen right away. It wasn't comfortable, believe me.

Because of that experience, this reading reminded me of that time. So imagine waiting to be picked for a team, one is the fiery furnace where only the wicked get picked. The other is heaven where the good are chosen.

Which team are we going to be picked for? Do any really want the fiery furnace as a home team. Or is heaven the team we are all hoping to be chosen for. It's up to you now, isn't it. This is where we take inventory of our lives, our souls and purge the sins from our life. We are to sort through our lives and remove the old way, that of sin and replace it with new, the good. Just like when we clean out our closets, pantries of old stuff. We take stock of what we have remove the old and replace it with new and fresh stock.

While we have time, don't you think it is also time for us to take stock of our lives and change a few things that point us in the direction of the fiery furnace and clean out our dirty souls.