“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt. 13:47-53)

“So it will be at the end of the age….” But for now, the kingdom of heaven is a net that is cast wide, thrown into the sea, and fish of every kind find themselves caught in it.

At the end of the age there will be a sorting out, a division, a separation, a judgment….

But for now, you and I and all of us are being drawn together into the mystery of the Kingdom, God’s reign breaking into the world.

This passage makes it sound like there’s one net, perhaps one great experience by which all of us find ourselves caught up in God’s great loving gift of salvation.

But how we know that these moments of being captivated by Love Incarnate and Beauty and Goodness and Truth are like personalized and precious pearls. A million ways in which Jesus knocks on a million hearts…. His request for our attention…. The hope that we will return his advances…. The desire that we will cast ourselves into his arms with the relief of discovering that we are cared for by an ever provident God….

Augustine described his own encounter with the Kingdom this way in his Confessions: “You were within me, but I was outside. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.” (Book X)

Unlike Augustine, I don’t have one dramatic encounter with God who “broke through my deafness.” Instead, probably like you, I can recount an endless string of small ways in which he has broken into my life: in tragic moments and in grateful ones, while overcome by nature’s beauty and quietly absorbed with God’s glory at Mass, when life seemed boring and sad and when it burst with adventure. Small though they may be, they are continuous, and the more I notice them and am grateful for them, the more he reciprocates with gifts of more presence.

Being taken up in the nets of the Kingdom stretches us, astounds us, changes us.

Take some time today to remember how you have been caught up in the nets of God’s mercy. Perhaps using each of your senses, you can deepen your gratitude for what you have known in God’s presence: what you have seen, what you have heard, what you have tasted, what you have touched. And, like Augustine, give thanks!

Image credit: Photo by Matea Gregg on Unsplash

Praying with this Passage of Scripture