All three readings today share one common thread: an experience of God\u2019s majesty and power, a call to mission and conversion, and the need for God\u2019s grace and encouragement to change and to accept the invitation.<\/p>\n
Isaiah in today\u2019s First Reading experiences a vision of God\u2019s glory and thinks he\u2019s about to die, and die as a sinner. Throughout the Old Testament a basic principle was that anyone who looked upon the Lord would die. The Lord sends the angel to purify him and then invites him to be his prophet. When Our Lord calls you to do something great with your life (and being Christian is something great to do with your life), a natural reaction is to feel your unworthiness, your nothingness in comparison to Who is asking something of you. Isaiah today needed to know that the Lord would \u201chave his back.\u201d Isaiah wouldn\u2019t be working alone and unprepared: the Lord had him purified and would be with him on his mission.<\/p>\n
Paul in today\u2019s Second Reading recalls the core of the Gospel: that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and his own close and personal encounter with the Risen Lord. When he recalls his own encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, he also recalls his unworthiness to be commissioned as an apostle, but by God\u2019s grace he\u2019s made capable of carrying out his mission. Paul persecuted Christians and was convinced they were abandoning their religion. Then the Risen Lord appeared to him, struck him blind, and gave him \u201cquiet time\u201d to process what had happened. One of the most humiliating experiences anyone can have is realizing that you were completely wrong about something, compounded by the fact that you know everyone\u2019s going to find out you were wrong. Worse still, Paul received a special revelation that he had actually been hindering Our Lord\u2019s mission and not really embracing the mission Our Lord had sown in his heart. Paul sees his mission of being an apostle as a great work of Our Lord\u2019s grace, not just his own merits.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s Gospel, upon seeing the miraculous catch of fish that makes him go from calling Jesus \u201cMaster\u201d to calling him \u201cLord,\u201d Peter acknowledges his sinfulness and unworthiness for what Our Lord is asking him. Throughout the Gospel we see faith and fear mixed in the man who would become, after Jesus\u2019 Resurrection, the leader of the Apostles and the vicar of Christ on earth. After a long night of fishing an itinerant rabbi asks to use his boat and take advantage of the natural acoustics of being out on the water, also giving his listeners a better view. Was Peter hoping Jesus would give him something? Was he performing an act of charity? The Gospel account isn\u2019t clear, but he let Our Lord into his boat and, in a certain sense, into his world. As Peter soon found out, Jesus expected something much greater from him. We don\u2019t know if he listened to much of Our Lord\u2019s teaching as he sat in his boat, since he was tired after a long night of fishing, but Jesus encouraged him to cast out the nets and Peter responded with trust, even if maybe he was just humoring him. The amazing catch was a response to Peter in a language he could understand. In that moment he realized Our Lord was asking him for far more than a shuttle service, and that he was not just another itinerant rabbi. Suddenly Peter knew that Our Lord understood his world too. Peter knew his weakness, but Our Lord knew it too. In the end, even though it presented a few more hurdles, Peter\u2019s weakness did not prevent either of them from accomplishing their mission.<\/p>\n
Our Lord wants to step into your world, just like he stepped into Peter\u2019s boat. He wants to build the bridge between yours and his. However, he expresses this by way of invitation, and, no matter what your anxiety and concerns, accept his invitation and he will help you succeed. It was not easy for Isaiah, Paul, or Peter either, but it will be more fulfilling than you could have ever imagined possible.<\/p>\n
Readings:\u00a0Isaiah 6:1\u20132a, 3\u20138;\u00a0Psalm 138:1\u20135, 7\u20138;\u00a01 Corinthians 15:1\u201311;\u00a0Luke 5:1\u201311.<\/em>\u00a0See also 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C<\/a>,\u00a022nd Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a01st Week in Ordinary Time, Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" All three readings today share one common thread: an experience of God\u2019s majesty and power, a call to mission and conversion, and the need for God\u2019s grace and encouragement to change and to accept the invitation. Isaiah in today\u2019s First Reading experiences a vision of God\u2019s glory and thinks he\u2019s about to die, and die … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[121,37,38,45,15],"class_list":["post-3115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cycle-c","tag-fifth-sunday","tag-fifth-week","tag-ordinary-time","tag-sunday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-Of","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3116,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions\/3116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}