Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
Our first reading today is the familiar parable from the prophet Jeremiah, the potter and the clay.
The prophet writes: “Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel” (Jeremiah 18:6). The Hebrew word for “potter” is translated “maker” with reference to God.
As the refrain of the 1968 pop song by the American Breed “Bend Me, Shape Me,” goes:
Bend me, shape me
Any way you want me
Long as you love me
It’s all right.
Bend me, shape me
Any way you want me
You got the power
To turn on the light.
As clay to be molded and shaped, our cooperation with the potter and ultimately our acceptance are required. What “form” does the potter use for this task? God is the best of potters and wants to produce the very best in us. Perhaps many of our losses and disappointments in life are opportunities for the divine potter to mold us anew.
It is true that God does not cause pain and suffering, but God does allow it. Perhaps inevitable disappointments and hardships make us more pliable for the potter. Life is a mystery that, on the surface, sometimes makes no sense, as we experience heartache and afflictions such as the death of a loved one, poor health, plans that go awry, relationships that fall apart, job loss and so much more. Troubles and trials are part of the human condition.
Such struggles soften us so that we are more readily remolded as the potter sees fit.
Jeremiah’s parable teaches that we need to seek, as best we can, to know what God wants from us and to accept it. Harmony in life, even in the midst of tumult, depends on making God’s will our will, to be perfected as the potter desires. We sometimes need redirection, yet often we fail. But the fact that we seek to do the will of the potter, albeit imperfectly, pleases him.
As Paul puts it, writing to the Romans: “Has the potter no right over the clay?” (Romans 9:21). The potter does indeed.
Let us pray for enlightenment as to how the potter seeks to mold and shape us to become more and more the image and likeness of the one who models the clay.
—Timothy J. Cronin