Year C / 5th Sunday / Ordinary Time
Readings: Isaiah 6.1-2a, 3-8 / Ps 138 (R/v 1c) / 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 / Luke 5.1-11
I believe that all of us
desire to listen to God’s call.
And we want to respond,
as best as we can.
But human as we are,
we struggle with God’s call, don’t we?
I know I do, every now and then, for different reasons:
-- too busy to make time to hear God’s call;
-- too self-centered to say ‘yes’;
-- too fearful of what God is asking of me.
Maybe you have had similar experiences.
You and I might also struggle with
what I call the Isaiah anxiety
which our First Reading presents:
this is the sense of being unworthy when God calls.
Like Isaiah, we struggle with our own sense of unworthiness.
Because of our sins, or our limitations, or our weaknesses,
we tend to shy away from listening attentively to God.
If we do hear God’s call,
chances are we might be too embarrassed,
because of our unworthiness,
to respond wholeheartedly to God.
But God still calls us,
still calls us persistently and lovingly.
The question then is
“What can give us reason enough
to better respond to God’s call?”
In our Gospel Reading this morning
Luke narrates Jesus stepping
into Peter’s boat to teach the crowds
and then filling it up with abundant fish,
that in turn moves Peter and his friends
to leave everything and to follow Jesus
who calls them to be fishers of men and women.
I’d like to suggest that this scene offers us two reasons
why we - whether we come as we do every Sunday to Mass
or for the first time in many years -
can respond more generously to God’s call in our lives.
First, that Jesus is already with us when God calls.
This is the comforting truth
we can glimpse from meditating
on Jesus stepping into Peter’s boat.
Jesus steps into Peter’s boat without asking permission
and takes over Peter’s space and job, even his livelihood.
He sets himself up in Peter’s space
to teach the crowds.
What Jesus really does by stepping in
is to take charge of Peter’s life.
All Peter has to do is to let Jesus lead.
And hasn’t Jesus also stepped into the boats of our lives,
be they weathered, battered or even ruined,
because of what we have done or failed to do
or what others have done to us?
Hasn’t he
comforted you with another’s care in your pain?
answered my prayer with a community’s love?
led us out of darkness with another’s wisdom?
And haven’t we, again and again,
been surprised to find Jesus stepping into our boats,
even before we asked him to?
Recognizing that Jesus
has already stepped into our lives
and is with us when we hear God’s call
should give us the confidence
and courage to respond.
We can do so because Jesus’ presence
as his Spirit in us tells us
we are not unworthy.
We are God’s own, God’s beloved.
Second, that Jesus forms us to respond to God’s call.
This is the instructive promise
we can embrace when we contemplate
Jesus instructing Peter to fish.
Peter’s boat is empty; there is no fisherman’s catch.
Yet, Jesus steps into this emptiness
and fills it with abundant fish that overflows into another boat.
It is Jesus who shows Peter when and where to fish.
It is Jesus who instructs Peter on how to catch,
and to catch well.
And hasn’t Jesus also entered
into the boats of our lives,
stepped into what little we have,
and taught us how to live meaningfully
by living for others?
Perhaps, we have experienced
Jesus doing this when we
--- sacrificed something we wanted for another who needed it,
--- shared words of concern and comfort with the grieving,
--- even offered justice by standing up for the discriminated.
Acknowledging that Jesus
enters into our lives
and instructs us to live better by loving another,
should give us the hope
and the reason to say ‘yes’ to God.
Jesus’ presence in our lives is formative;
his Spirit teaches us how to live out God’s call well.
More importantly, Jesus’ presence
forms in us a spirit of thanksgiving
for being saved
and, more so, for being chosen for God’s work.
And gratitude, a theologian wrote,
cannot not move us to reach out and respond to a giving God.
That Jesus is already with us when God calls.
and forms us to respond with thanksgiving
are the two reasons our Gospel reading today
invites us to embrace.
To embrace because they may quite possibly be
the very reasons
that enabled Peter and the first apostles Jesus called
to leave everything behind and to follow him
to do God’s work.
If this is so, are they then not
good enough reasons for you and me
to leave aside more of our selfish selves this week
and to follow Jesus, through whom God calls us,
and, in whom we find our rationale to respond
more confidently by saying
“Yes, Lord, here I am!”
written for sunday mass at Blessed Mother Teresa Parish, Dorchester, Boston
photo: from highwidhim
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