Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

St Peter Chrysologus

 Lectionary: 404

Whenever the object of clay which he was making turned out badly in his hand, 
he tried again,
making of the clay another object of whatever sort he pleased.
Then the word of the LORD came to me:
Can I not do to you, house of Israel,
as this potter has done? says the LORD.
Indeed, like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand, house of Israel.

I can hear my favorite heretic using Jeremiah's parable to argue that God can refashion the Catholic Church in any way which might please the Lord; and if He (or She) wanted the Church to ordain women, remarry divorced persons, or scrap the papacy, HESH could do so without regard to human traditions and customs. 

But the Gospel is more demanding than perpetual flexibility. And  I can hear myself fuming, "You misread this parable entirely! With your inflexible relativism, you cannot allow yourself to be molded into something that pleases the Lord!" The amicable conversation would deteriorate from there, and so I avoid these conversations. 

My inflexible relativist friend doesn't like the doctrine of Original Sin, and thinks the God of the Old Testament is, to use the Reverend Shannon's expression in Tennessee Williams' Night of the Iquana, "a bad-tempered childish old, old, sick peevish man."

The doctrine of Original Sin assures of what we have suspected all along: there is something seriously wrong with human life. Despite our artistic creations, astonishing accomplishments, and amazing technologies which promote human flourishing we turn around and destroy everything we have created, including our own children, without apparent remorse or regret. In the face of that perversity, sensitive souls like Tennessee Williams and his Reverend Shannon resort to self-destructive depression and alcoholism. 

But that cannot be, and is not, the response of God's faithful people. Rather, we acknowledge our sins, and the sins of our fathers. We recognize that our sin began with our prehistoric ancestors, the mythical Adam and Eve. We have always sinned despite the invitation to grace which God gives to every generation. We continually build systems laced with evil desires, and declare, "Thus has it always been, and it's God who made it that way! Just look at the evil violence of lion's toward lambs and snakes toward children!" 

Nor does it help to point out they've misquoted Isaiah's promise of a new Eden: 

....the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat;

The calf and the young lion shall browse together,

with a little child to guide them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

together their young shall lie down;

the lion shall eat hay like the ox.

The baby shall play by the viper’s den,

and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.

They shall not harm or destroy on all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the LORD,

as water covers the sea. Is 11:6-9

Jeremiah's potter demonstrates God's endless patience as He destroys our misbegotten schemes and institutions, and reshapes our hearts and minds toward the dignity and beauty of his original intentions. We find that dignity and beauty in the very places that my favorite heretic despises: the Magisterium, sacraments, traditions, and spirit of Roman Catholicism. Because we are familiar with our history of sin and reconciliation, we can recognize God's handiwork, and cooperate with him in the building of His Kingdom. 

That project, I don't suppose, will be completed in my lifetime. Unlike the future histories which we create -- things like the worker's paradise, ecological sustainability and the Gaia Principle -- Salvation History cannot be predicted. As Saint Paul said, 

"Eye has not seen, 

ear has not heard, 

and what has not entered the human heart,

what God has prepared for those who love him."