The Net Cast Widely

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This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.” The net pictured here is a large dragnet, usually about six feet deep and up to several hundred feet wide, positioned in the lake by boats and requiring several men to operate (hence the plurals of v. 48). The picture is realistic, portraying an ordinary event with no surprising twists: The net brings in “every kind” of both good and bad fish, which are then sorted, the good being kept and the bad thrown out.

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The County Fair

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I grew up in Orlando during the last century – somehow that make me sound like one of the ancient ones. I have to admit, I am getting there. Anyway. In my youth Orlando had no “metropolitan area” and was a mid-sized with population of just a little over 52,000 people – and an annual county fair. The fair grounds were towards downtown in the area now west of I-4 and extending west to Paramour Ave. Continue reading →

Two Parables

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This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it. Matthew apparently intends the parable of the treasure to be interpreted together with the parable of the pearl, which immediately follows. The two parables do have common features: (I) In each case only a brief vignette of a crucial situation is given, without enough details to evaluate them as realistic stories. The interpreter should, therefore, be wary of filling in the gaps from pious imagination, but concentrate on what the parable does, in fact, portray. Continue reading →

Barbie

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As I am sure y’all know, the Barbie movie is out and it is exceeding box office sales well beyond expectations, and expectations were already pretty high. I have no comments or insights about the movie as I have  not seen it… and am not likely to watch it in theaters. When it streams? A friend and I have a general pre-watch classification system for movie. Barbie falls in the “streaming online, weather is terrible, I’m stuck inside, and why not” category.  But all that is neither here or there. This post is following the “breaking news” that Barbie’s pink is (a) not real world and (b) that her pink looks fake!  Seriously, there was an article in this morning’s news. Continue reading →

A Pearl of Great Price

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This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Pearls were as highly valued in the ancient world as they are today, and were a conspicuous way of displaying wealth (1 Tim 2:9; Rev 17:4; 18:12, 16). Huge pearls are the gates in the symbolic new Jerusalem (Rev 21:21). But there is a subtle difference between this and the preceding parable. Continue reading →

Earthen Vessels

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Today is the Feast of St. James and the first reading is one of my favorite passages from St. Paul: “We hold this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7). It points out one of the great paradoxes of this life of discipleship: it leads to glory, but entails suffering along the way. What is this treasure? The context of Paul’s writing suggests three possibilities: Continue reading →

Hidden Treasure

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This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Buried treasure is the stuff of popular stories in every age and while out “pirates” no longer sail the Seven Seas we seem content with stories of lottery winners. Given Israel’s location at the crossroads of major powers to the north and east and to the south (Egypt) there is a long history of wars and rumors of war playing out upon the promised land. Continue reading →

Regrets

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In today’s first reading we see the plan of the Lord to rescue, to liberate the tribes of Jacob from enslavement in Egypt. And everyone has regrets. Pharaoh is realizing the implications of letting the Israelites go – maybe he should have let them go into the desert for three days as Moses first requested (Exodus 3:18). Pharaoh believes he has made a foolish choice and regrets it even in the moment – and will regret it more as the events of the Exodus unfold. Continue reading →