5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 6:1-8 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Luke 5:1-11
Over the last couple of months our liturgies and Scripture Readings have recalled some of the many and various ways that God calls people. We have noticed too the many and various ways that people respond. God sent an angel to Mary –“You have found favour with the Lord ….” Mary responded Let it be done … “In a dream God sent an angel to Joseph – “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife …” When Joseph woke from the dream he did as the angel said”. God used the priest Eli to direct the boy Samuel to respond to God’s call – he was to say “Speak Lord, your servant is listening”. Jeremiah was assured by God that “I have put my words in your mouth …. Before I formed you in the womb, I appointed you”.
When Jesus began his ministry in Galilee his first teaching was “Repent and Believe” because he had ‘come to call sinners’. But very early in the Gospels we see Jesus ‘calling’. He calls disciples and apostles to accompany him on his journey and his ministry. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark Jesus chooses and calls his apostles while walking by the Sea of Galilee. They are mainly fishermen and Jesus calls them as a group. In the Gospel of John Jesus calls two disciples sent by John the Baptist.
Saint Luke, the Portrait Painter of the Evangelists, prefers to deal with the individual. Jesus calls Simon, the individual, the unique.
Luke paints a picture of Simon Peter (here in this passage of the Gospel and elsewhere) a man with his own mind, abrasive, impetuous, abrupt, dismissive, disloyal and dishonest. We get to know Simon Peter and, in knowing him, we here recognise that Jesus did indeed call sinners!
But it is Simon Peter himself who recognises his sinfulness – “Leave me Lord: I am a sinful man”. This realisation is the moment of his conversion and repentance. Like Isaiah (1st Reading) who despite the fact that he was “a man of unclean lips” can eventually answer the Lord’s call –“Here I am Lord, send me” and like St Paul (2nd Reading) who “persecuted the Church of God” and was called to be an apostle, Simon Peter from this moment of ‘distance’ from God experiences a moment of great closeness.
“Repent and believe”, the message of Jesus, is played out in the calling of His Disciples. From sin comes self-realisation; from the realisation of sinfulness comes repentance; from repentance comes closeness to God, deep Faith in God and commitment to God’s Kingdom. “From now on it is people you will catch!”