Postscript to Sunday Reflections. Do we choose or reject Jesus for all eternity?

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Christ Cleansing the Temple
Luca Giordano [Web Gallery of Art]

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers" (Luke 19:45-46; Gospel).

I featured the painting above in Sunday Reflections for yesterday in connection with the Gospel for the Traditional Latin Mass for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost. That Gospel and Luca Giordano's painting show a side of Jesus that is not particularly emphasised these days.

But the longer form of yesterday's Gospel for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, shows something of that side of Jesus: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind. When it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

God does not desire that anyone choose that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for all eternity. But God has given each of us free will and the ability to choose evil. The daily news shows us how many do so, often to an utterly depraved degree. And each of us knows only too well how often we choose to do what is wrong in 'smaller' things, what we call venial sins.

However, St Paul tells us: But [the Lord] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Blessed Rupert Mayer SJ
23 January 1976 – 1 November 1945
[Photo]

Continue at Bangor to Bobbio.

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