Gospel: In the Image of the Son

Today marks the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, and the Gospel passage will be read according to St Matthew (tap here for the complete Mass readings from USCCB).

Today's Gospel concludes three weeks of readings of the 13th Chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew. Throughout these three weeks we have heard Jesus teaching crowds about the kingdom of heaven, and we have heard Jesus interpret some of his teachings for the disciples. In this week's Gospel, Jesus offers three more short parables.

The first two parables describe the great value of the kingdom of heaven. In the first parable, Jesus says that the kingdom is like a buried treasure that is worth possessing even if it means giving up everything else. In the second parable, Jesus proposes that the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great worth for which one would sell everything else to possess. These parables teach us that we are to place everything we value in the service of the pursuit of the kingdom.

The third parable that Jesus told in today's Gospel reading is different from the first two, but it is reminiscent of the parable of the sower heard proclaimed in last week's Gospel. The kingdom of heaven is compared to fishing with a wide net. After the fish had been collected, the good fish are kept and the bad fish are thrown away; so too in the final judgment, will the wicked and the righteous be separated.

Our present Gospel reading concludes with a curious statement about a scribe who understands the kingdom of heaven. Here, a metaphor is offered: this scribe is like the head of a household who "brings from his storeroom both the new and the old." The scribes referred to here are experts in Mosaic law. It is possible that Jesus is instructing the early Christians community on how to proceed in the interpretation of Jewish law with respect to Jesus' "new" teaching. The teaching about the kingdom of heaven does not replace the Jewish tradition; rather, it only interprets the faith in a different light.

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