Today’s Reading is from Mt 13:47-53. It includes this:
Jesus said to the disciples: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away.
Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
The disciples who had been fishermen understood this very well. They often had repeatedly used “a net thrown into the sea”. They had “collected fish of every kind”. They had “hauled it ashore” and sat down “to put what is good into buckets”. What is bad, they would “throw away“.
The Disciples had known how to tell good from bad before they met Jesus. They had gone beyond merely “knowing”. They had separated good from bad. After judging, they had passed sentence. The good fish were kept, the bad thrown away.
Making His Disciples, and those who would be ordained in The Only Church He Founded, into “fishers of men” also made them “judgers of men.” That power to judge was accompanied by the authority to pass sentence. Mt. 16: 18-20 shows us that the power He gave the disciples and those in the living link ordained by them, was the greatest power on earth: “What you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven. What you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.”
One understands why the Pastor Bobs ignore this. They are on the outside, looking in. They did not seek ordination as living links in the chain reaching from those ordained by Jesus to the Catholic priests of today. They have no power to bind or loose. They do have the ability to refer those in need to Catholic priests who have that power.
Some of the Pastor Bobs do good work helping people get closer to God and working through difficulties with the help of prayer and guidance. And, in places where there is no Catholic Church, many of the 43,000 Pastor Bobisms are closer to God than nothing. Still, one prays: “If the Pastor Bobs, like so many Anglicans have done, would ask the nearest Catholic Bishop to find a way to move themselves and their congregations into The Only Church Jesus Founded, the world would be a better place.”
“Jesus asked: “Do you understand all these things?” They answered, “Yes.” And He replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.”
