SEPTEMBER 3, 2036 FATHER ERNIE DE CICCIO
How fitting that we get this Gospel reading that talks about St. Peter, when he was called by Jesus, and of course, it’s fitting because today is the feast of one of the successors of St. Peter, St. Gregory the Great.
And like all the successors of St. Peter up until now – Pope Leo – these popes have had to guide the church because they’ve all caught this net full of fish.
Peter was in shock at the huge catch. And the question is, do you think all those fish that they caught were good to eat? Probably not. If only that catch was made up only of tasty fish.
But anybody who’s gone on a major fishing expedition and you see those big nets, you know that they got to cast some of them out. Anybody who’s gone and bought a bushel of apples or of tomatoes, when you go through them, there’s always a few bad ones. Out they go.
And we have a church of something like 1.4 billion people. And reality check, it’s made up of saints and sinners. We’ve had saints like St. Gregory the Great, and sadly, we’ve had sinners as well. Can we live with that?
I love the passage in the Gospel where some weeds grow up with the wheat, and the servant wants to get rid of them right away. And the master says, “No, no, no, let’s wait till the end, “till the harvest, and then it’ll be separated out.” I like that image because it means that even the wheat has a chance to be transformed into grain.
At the harvest, everything will be made right. But right now, we’re not in heaven. We live in a world of broken people. We live in a church with broken people. Do we want to create this perfect society where you can only come in if you are 100 perfect? If that were the case, we would have no church at all.
But this is where we learn, from the beginning, from the time of the proclamation of the Gospel, that we’re sent out to catch those fish, and they are not perfect. Hopefully, at the end, not too many will have to be cast out. Hopefully, by the end, most of them will have been purified and become what they are meant to be – good fish, good sheep, good wheat.
It’s good that we’re celebrating a feast of a saint who lived so long ago, centuries ago. I always tell people it’s important for us modern Christians to have a historical perspective, learn from history. The church has not always been perfect. We’ve had crusades. We’ve had inquisitions. We’ve had all kinds of problems, you name it.
Yes, some of it can be scandalous, and certainly it’s upsetting. But we do not forget that the Holy Spirit of God is always working in the church. It’s still the church that Jesus Christ built on his apostles 2000 years ago. because our God has never abandoned his church.
When he called St. Peter to be his disciple, he knew what he was doing. He created the first pope. And under the guidance of our leaders, up until this day and I’m a firm believer that every single pope for 2000 years, whether you’ve liked him or not, has been the choice of the Holy Spirit, called to keep the church together.
Yes, saints and sinners for now. So, let’s not get discouraged by some bad fish being caught. Let’s not get discouraged by difficult personalities who might be attending Mass with us sometimes. They’re still God’s children, still on the journey, like the rest of us.
What do we think church is? Again, we’re not a society of perfect people. We’re mostly broken people, trying each day to live in a manner that is pleasing to God.
So, let’s never give up on our parishes, on the universal church, on our own selves because we’re not perfect either. But we will get there by God’s grace. We’re all called to grow.
When we’re baptized, we’re not transformed into totally spotless individuals. Although the original sin is washed away, chances are we’re going to sin again. Even after we go to confession, that state of grace lasts for a little while, but we’re going to sin again.
So, let’s not judge ourselves. Let’s not judge each other. Let’s not judge this church that we belong to, which Christ gave us. Let’s believe that God is with us, guiding us on the journey, until we all reach that perfection of the kingdom of our God.
