St. Michael's Lent 2026 - Reading #31 - Lineage
Reading
In these evil days the Church still swims in a mixed net — good and reprobate together until the shore.
Augustine faces it without flinching: "In this wicked world, in these evil days, when the Church measures her future loftiness by her present humility, and is exercised by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labours, and dangerous temptations, when she soberly rejoices, rejoicing only in hope, there are many reprobate mingled with the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in a drag net; and in this world, as in a sea, both swim enclosed without distinction in the net, until it is brought ashore, when the wicked must be separated from the good, that in the good, as in His temple, God may be all in all."
The shore is not yet; humility is the measure of future loftiness.
He recalls how the catch began: "We acknowledge, indeed, that His word is now fulfilled who spake in the psalm, and said, 'I have announced and spoken; they are multiplied above number.' This takes place now, since He has spoken, first by the mouth of his forerunner John, and afterward by His own mouth, saying, 'Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' He chose disciples, whom He also called apostles, of lowly birth, unhonoured, and illiterate, so that whatever great thing they might be or do, He might be and do it in them. He had one among them whose wickedness He could use well in order to accomplish His appointed passion, and furnish His Church an example of bearing with the wicked."
Lineage in the Church means bearing the mixed net until then.
Reflection
Expect this, and teach your children to expect it, because the alternative is watching them lose their faith over a scandal you never prepared them for. Sooner or later they will meet the unworthy priest, the hypocritical parishioner, the Catholic institution that fails — and if their ecclesiology is a fantasy of the sorted net, the discovery will read as fraud. Augustine hands you the inoculation: the mixture is not a bug in the Church; it is the announced condition of the Church until the shore. The separation is real, and it is not ours to perform, and it is not yet.
There is mercy in the unsorted net, and your family swims in it: the mixture means there is room for the Cain in each of us to become an Abel before the shore.
Bear with the wicked. You have been borne with. And keep your household in the net; the sorting happens on land, and only One has authority to do it. One week remains — and its subject is the thing all five weeks have been fighting for.