Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori

“Rise up, be off to the potter’s house, (and watch him work, [my addition])” (Jer. 18:1). I jokingly tell people that this passage from the prophet Jeremiah was written just for me. When John Eudes interviewed me before I entered Genesee, he asked if I was afraid of work. I replied, “Oh no, Rev. Fr., I can watch anyone do it!” As Jeremiah observes the potter working the clay, he tells us about how the Divine Potter forms us. God has a plan for the lump of clay in his hands. God will patiently work with the clay until it becomes the vessel he intends it to be. God knows the strengths and weaknesses of the clay he works on the wheel and uses them, strengths and weaknesses, to produce the finished product.

We are all a work in progress. A formless lump of clay can only become a vessel of beauty in the hands of the potter. It is God’s love that changes and transforms us. Because love is freely given, we have to freely surrender to the potter’s plan. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews put it well: “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). He will shape, form, and stretch us in ways we never thought possible or desirable. In the face of our apprehension and fears, he only asks us to trust him. Because we are the work of his hands, we can manifest the glory of Christ in our mortal flesh. “We hold this precious treasure in earthen vessels to show that the grandeur and surpassing greatness of the power belongs to God and does not come from us” (2 Cor. 4:7).

 “Let us, then, abandon everything to God’s good pleasure, because being infinitely wise, He knows what is best for us; and being all-good and all-loving — having given His life for us — He wills what is best for us” (St. Alphonsus Liguori).