3.03 The Dragnet
III. The Dragnet.
Matthew 13:47 - Matthew 13:50. This parable completes the group of seven in Matt. xiii. In it Jesus likens the Kingdom of Heaven to a dragnet cast into the sea which 102 THE PARABLES OF JESUS enclosed fishes of all kinds. When it was full, the fishers drew it upon the beach, and then sat down and gathered the good together into vessels, while they cast the decaying fish away.
He then explained the parable: “ So shall it be at the end of the world. The angels shall go forth and shall separate the bad from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.”
It was fitting that the sevenfold cycle of parables which began with the sowing of the Seed, the initiation of the Kingdom in the minds of individuals, should end in one which reproduced the last scene of all in the history of God’s dealings with mankind. The parable conveys much the same lessons as that of the Cockle or Darnel among the Wheat which it partly overlaps. It must have appealed forcibly to those of the Apostles who had been fishermen, inasmuch as the figurative half of the parable was taken from their trade; and it also reminded them of their new vocation as fishers of men. It likewise prepared the disciples betimes to acquiesce later on in the truth which their future experience would THE PARABLES OF JESUS 103 reveal to them namely, that the Society which their Master was about to inaugurate would not be a society consisting exclusively of the perfect, and that inclusion in it would not imply the acceptableness before God of those so included. To be descended according to the flesh from Abraham, or to have received with joy the message of the Gospel, would not avail those who showed by their unworthy lives that they had no spiritual kinship with the great Father of Israel, and that in act they belied their professions. In this parable, unlike the parable of the Cockle, the question of the origin of evil is not touched on. It is taken for granted that the Church militant, though heavenly in its origin, would not realize in the full sense the ideal sketched by St. Paul of the Church as “ a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing,” but “ holy and without blemish.” 1 The human element in it would always be a fruitful source of sin and disorder; and the just would have to bear with this as inevitable, supporting themselves with the Blessed Vision of the 1 Ephesians 5:27.
104 THE PARABLES OF JESUS Church triumphant, in which the Apostle’s words would receive their full and perfect fulfilment.
TAGS: [Parables]