A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Find today’s readings here.
Whenever we sing the hymn “Earthen Vessels” in church, it makes me cry. I can’t get through it. I am transported back to the time I heard this song with new ears, because my dad was close to dying. I was confronted by the enormity that I was going to lose the treasure of my dad that his beloved earthen vessel held, and I wasn’t ready. We’re never ready. Fifteen years later, I still grieve.
Our earthen vessels are fragile and fleeting. It’s a given that they don’t last. But these brittle physical bodies are the tools, the substance, that God has given us to work with while we live here on God’s green earth. We have been formed in God’s image, and we have been purposefully called, even as we remember that we are dust.
Like us, clay is made of earth. If you’ve ever watched a potter magically pull up a vase or a pot or a cup from the gloppy muddy lump on their spinning wheel, you know that those talented hands seem to make miracles happen. So I love the image in today’s reading from Jeremiah of God as the divine potter, working the wheel of creation to bring us into being and reforming us when we turn out badly. It’s heartening to know that the clay of our lives can always be refashioned to something more pleasing to God. How good it is that in the hands of God the potter, we are afforded the grace of a second chance.
I hold onto this hopeful message in light of the Gospel reading from Matthew that follows. Jesus tells the story of the fishing net thrown into the sea to collect “fish of every kind,” which pretty much describes all of us, but then he explains the process of picking through the buckets of fish and tossing the bad ones “into the fiery furnace.” For good. Forever. Not much indication of second chances there. So maybe our thought for today is to be grateful for the holy potter’s hands that have formed us, but to shape up and get cracking on the job of bringing God’s Kingdom of heaven closer to earth, of being the hands and face of Jesus, of opening our arms and hearts to spread God’s love. We vessels made of clay hold treasure, but we are finite. Time is not guaranteed. Our clock is ticking. If today is the only raw material we have to work with, we’d best get busy.
