Sunday, February 10, 2013

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time


            The theme of our Scriptures today centers on God’s call.  I’d like to begin by starting with the fishermen, as this is one of my favorite pastimes.
            Now I will admit—there have been times, believe it or not, that I haven’t caught anything.  I’ve gotten skunked over a day or even a weekend.  While it’s a bummer, I fish for recreational purposes and can still have a great time with friends or family.
            Peter, James and John found themselves skunked after a night of long fishing.  Yet they didn’t just lose bragging rights from coming home empty—they fished for a living.  Thus they lost revenue and food.
            Then Jesus—a carpenter—whom the apostles had not met yet (as they weren’t apostles yet!) tells them how to fish.  Imagine someone coming to you in your profession and telling you what to do.  What would your response be?
            Peter’s response to this mysterious man was one of deep faith.  He told Jesus, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.”  And how did God respond to Peter’s faith?  With an abundance.  They had the catch of their lives.  How often I wish Jesus would show up while I am fishing on a slow day.
            Praise God men and women throughout the ages, while recognizing their own inadequacies, have responded with such faith.  Isaiah was “a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips”.  Yet he became a great prophet.  Paul, who reports today that he was “abnormally born” and “least of the apostles” became the greatest evangelizer we have ever seen.  Peter’s first response to the great catch of fish is, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.”  And he became our first pope.
            God does not call the saint.  He does not call the perfect.  He does not call people who have it all together.  He calls the sinner, the simple and the ordinary men and women to do His extraordinary work.  One of my favorite quotations captures this reality.  John Chrysostom once stated, “For the good deeds which tax-collectors and fishermen were able to accomplish by God’s grace, the philosophers, the rulers, the countless multitudes cannot even imagine.”
            As we approach the season of Lent, how are you answering God’s call for your life?  How are you responding to Jesus’ summons, “Come, follow me.”  Would that we had the courage and faith of Isaiah, Paul and Peter to leave our nets and follow Jesus saying, “Here I am, send me.”
            Then the philosophers, the rulers and the countless multitudes could not begin to imagine what God can do with us.

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