Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
Optional Memorial of Saint Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Peter of the Golden Word

First Reading: Jeremiah 18:1-6
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 146:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6ab
Gospel: Matthew 13:47-53
Daily readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/073026.cfm

God sends Jeremiah to the potter's house. And what Jeremiah sees is not a finished object on display — he sees a potter working at the wheel, and when the object of clay turns out badly in his hand, he simply tries again. Not frustrated. Not throwing the clay away. Just trying again, making of the clay another object, whatever sort he pleases. And then God speaks: can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done? Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.

This image is worth sitting with on a Thursday morning. Clay does not have to be perfect before the potter works with it. Clay does not have to arrive already shaped. The potter works with what is there — and when it goes wrong, he does not discard it. He tries again. You are in his hands. Still being shaped. Still on the wheel. The fact that it has not come out right yet is not a sign that you have been discarded. It is a sign that the potter is still working.

Then Jesus closes the long run of parables from Matthew 13 with the dragnet. The kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full, the haul comes ashore, and the good are kept, the bad thrown away. The sorting is real — Jesus does not pretend otherwise. But notice what the dragnet does first: it collects fish of every kind. Not the impressive ones only, not the already-formed ones only. Every kind. And then Jesus asks his disciples: do you understand all these things? And they say yes. So he gives them one final image — the good scribe instructed in the kingdom brings from his storeroom both the new and the old. The old wisdom and the new. Jeremiah's potter and the dragnet in the same storeroom.

Saint Peter Chrysologus, whose memorial we observe today, was a fifth-century bishop in Ravenna known for his short, piercing sermons — he was given the title Chrysologus, golden-worded, because of his gift for saying the essential thing with clarity and warmth. He wrote: "If you want your prayers to reach God, listen to his word when it reaches you." The potter sends a word. The dragnet hauls in everything. The golden-worded bishop distills it to one thing: listen, and be shaped.


A few questions to sit with today:

1. Am I willing to be clay on the wheel — still being shaped, still possibly needing to be remade — or have I decided I am already finished, for good or ill?

2. Is there a place in my life where something has not come out right — a relationship, a habit, a pattern — and I need to hear that the potter has not thrown the clay away but is simply trying again?

3. Peter Chrysologus says: if you want your prayers to reach God, listen to his word when it reaches you. Am I listening? Or am I mostly talking, asking, petitioning — and not pausing to receive?

4. The dragnet collects fish of every kind. Do I trust that I am among those being gathered — even in my inconsistency, my mixed motives, my half-formed faith?


One small thing for tomorrow:

Find one old thing and one new thing in your faith today: something from your past that still holds true (an old prayer, a Scripture you know by heart, a practice you were raised with) and something you have discovered more recently. Hold them together. That is the scribe's storeroom.


Lord Jesus, I am clay in the potter's hand. Sometimes badly formed, sometimes needing to be remade — but in your hands, not discarded. Work with me. Try again with whatever has gone wrong. I trust that the wheel is still turning, that you are still shaping something, even when I cannot see the form yet. Help me to listen the way Peter Chrysologus taught — so that when your word reaches me, my prayers reach you. Gather me in the dragnet, imperfect and mixed as I am, and let me be among those set aside as good at the end. May Mary, who was perfectly yielded clay, pray for all of us who are still on the wheel. Amen.


If you'd like to share: is there a place in your life where something went wrong and you wonder if the potter has set the clay aside — and what would it mean to trust that he is simply trying again?