This word came to Jeremiah from the LORD:
Rise up, be off to the potter’s house;
there I will give you my message.
I went down to the potter’s house and there he was,
working at the wheel.
Whenever the object of clay which he was making
turned out badly in his hand,
he tried again,
making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Can I not do to you, house of Israel,
as this potter has done? says the LORD.
Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand, house of Israel.
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.
Many of us carry an invisible yet heavy burden: the compulsion for perfection.
Social media is filled with retouched lives, flawless careers, and carefully curated successes. Our culture suggests that we must create, build, and polish ourselves to perfection. And if, in the process, we make a misstep – in a decision, a relationship, or an academic year – we are immediately gripped by the anxiety that we have been reduced to scrap. Today’s Scripture passages radically dismantle this oppressive illusion.
God sends the prophet Jeremiah to the potter’s workshop – a place of dust, water, noise, and mud. Many imagine God as a distant, sterile figure dispensing moral rules from a safe distance. The Gospel of the Incarnation, by contrast, proclaims something entirely different. He is not afraid to get His hands dirty with our lives. He is right up to His elbows in the midst of our daily lives, our struggles, our disappointments, and our dense, sometimes muddy reality. He does not wish to encounter our flawless, ideal selves, but rather the raw, unformed clay that we are right now.
Just think of the potter’s wheel! What happens when the clay slips and the vessel is spoiled in the master’s hands? The world discards, throws away, and replaces. God, however, does not throw the spoiled clay onto the trash heap. He kneads together the fragments, our tears, and our failures, and begins to shape us anew. For God, your failure is not the end of the line, but the raw material for a new vessel. Grace begins precisely where our own plans and attempts fail.
We often feel that our lives have become too fast-paced; we grow dizzy from constant changes and the weight of our decisions. That dizziness on the potter’s wheel is not a sign of chaos, but of transformation. As long as you are in motion, as long as the wheel turns, the Master’s hand remains upon your heart. And when the time of pain, loss, or crisis comes – what Scripture calls the fire of the furnace – do not think that God has forsaken you. The fire of the furnace does not burn to destroy. It is needed to fire the soft, fragile, malleable clay into a solid, steadfast, Christ-like character.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus presents us with the image of a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind. This net is the Church itself, and it is also the space of our Piarist family – a community where entry is not reserved for the flawless. We are all too prone to taking on the role of the sorting angels. We categorize, judge, and separate: who is the good fish and who is the worthless. Jesus, however, did not entrust His disciples with the task of sorting, but with casting the net. Our task is welcome and loving presence. Let us leave the final separation to the Good Lord!
As our former Father General, Pedro Aguado, put it:
“Let us call what we experience by its name; let us understand God, who is present in everything we experience – this is the individual task of the spiritual person, knowing that although we are earthen vessels, we carry a great treasure. Only thus can we be aware of what God is working within us, even if we are like Jacob: ‘I am unworthy of all the mercy and faithfulness You have shown Your servant’ (Gen 32:11).”
We are all earthen vessels – fragile, vulnerable, sometimes cracked. But the secret of our calling lies not in the perfection of the vessel, but in the immeasurable treasure that this humble clay holds.
At the end of His parables, Jesus speaks of the scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, who is like the master of a household who brings out of his storeroom treasures both new and old. This is the deepest core of the Piarist charism: Pietas et Litterae. The legacy of Saint Joseph Calasanz is precisely about this wisdom. We do not become bogged down in worshipping the past, nor do we chase after the superficial fads of the present. We have the courage to reach down to the deep, sustaining roots of a two-thousand-year-old faith (the old), and we possess the openness to recognize God’s active presence in the culture, language, and questions of today’s young people (the new).
Dear Young People!
God does not look upon you with burdensome expectations, but with creative, shaping love. Your life – with all its stumbles, its search for direction, and its moments of dizziness – is in God’s hands. You are an earthen vessel, but the treasure within you is indestructible. Do we have enough trust to stop trying to build ourselves up, and let the Master’s fingers shape our lives? Are you able to see in the person sitting next to you – with all their faults and frailties – not a write-off, but a brother or sister bearing a divine treasure?
