Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Separating, With Exposing Judgement

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 8.3.23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Matthew 13:47-53

Friends, today’s Gospel reminds us of the Final Judgment,
when the wicked will be separated from the righteous.
When good and evil are confused or intermingled,
divine judgment separates them, clarifying the issue.

Bob Dylan said, “The enemy I see wears the cloak of decency.”
One of the favorite ruses of evil is to cover itself in the mantle of justice and piety,
at the same time aping and hiding behind that which it opposes.
Christ’s judgment rips away these cloaking devices,
these deceits, and shows things as they are.

Authentic Christianity is a fighting religion,
and it calls evil by its name.
The Church knows what stands outside of itself, and it turns its back on it.
The bearer of light and truth,
it separates good from evil,
sometimes painfully, like a “two-edged sword.”

[MurphsLaw]

+++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.+++