Homily for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 9, 2025. Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11; Gospel of St. Luke 5:1-11. Theme: Turning Our Lives Over to God
When we hear the words, “I surrender” or “I give up” we tend to think of the humiliation of defeat, the loss of power and control over our lives. Most of us fight hard against saying these words because we want to avoid being thought of as weak, incompetent or incapable. And yet, one of the many paradoxes in the teachings of Jesus is that we can only become spiritually strong when we admit that we are interiorly weak; we can only be lifted up to greatness after we acknowledge our utter nothingness before God. This is precisely the lesson that all three of the holy men in today's Scriptures teach us. Each one had an up-close-and-personal experience of God which totally transformed their lives. Each one had a life-changing encounter with God that moved them to surrender their own self-image and ideas in order to become what God wanted them to be.
In our first reading the prophet Isaiah experienced a profound vision of God in all His glory. Isaiah was hesitant to take up the prophet's mission of calling the people to repentance because he was aware of his own sinfulness. In addition, he knew that saying “yes” to God’s call would bring opposition, rejection and ridicule into his life. And so fear made him hesitant to do what needed to be done. But in beholding the Lord’s glory and being cleansed by the Divine Touch, he surrendered to God saying, “Here I am Lord, send me.” And as a result of his surrender, Isaiah became the greatest prophet of the Messiah in the entire Old Testament. And to this day, almost 3,000 years later we still repeat at every Mass the words that he heard chanted by angels around God’s throne, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory…”
Our second reading presents us with the experience of St. Paul. In our reading he doesn’t go into the details of how he was called by the Lord (we learn about that from his other writings) but he makes reference to it. Before the Risen Christ appeared to him he was full of himself, cocky, stubborn and arrogant. He was convinced that he was God’s agent and solution to the problem of an annoying little branch of Judaism called The Way, whose members believed Jesus of Nazareth to be the promised Messiah. Surrendering was the very last thing this self-sure Israelite was likely to ever do, so God had to literally knock him to the ground and temporarily blind him so that he could see clearly and exactly the kind of arrogant man he had become. Long story short, Paul did surrender and was transformed into a tireless missionary for Christ, an inspired author of the New Testament, and the Apostle to Gentile Christians.
Lastly, our Gospel tells us about the conversion experience of Simon-Peter, which happened while he was having a real bad fishing day. As we know from so many other stories about him, Simon was headstrong, impetuous, and self-sufficient; a totally “alpha” kind of guy. He knew the fishing business like no one else and wasn’t about to be told how to do it more effectively by a carpenter from the backwoods village of Nazareth. But for some reason, perhaps it was the look in Christ’s eyes or the authority in his voice, or maybe cocky Simon thought he would teach this carpenter a lesson, so he decided to give in, to surrender. And lo and behold! He hit the jackpot and ended up with the biggest catch of fish in his career! Simon then surrendered to Christ with as much passion and gusto as he had at first resisted Him, saying, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” The strong-man facade he has built around himself crumbled as he acknowledged who and what he truly was at heart. His dropping of pretenses and self-sufficiency freed him to become Peter, the first pope, the rock upon which Jesus built His Church.
It seems to me that all three of these holy men speak to us about our need to get rid of any false self-images and give up the many self-serving plans that we have in mind. They call us to open our hearts in humility and step forward with trust in what God has in mind for us instead. While it is true that all three of them were already connected with God in some way, it was on their own terms. But their stories show us that letting go of the personas we project and the plans that we have in mind for ourselves are nothing compared to what God has in mind for us. The transformation of ourselves into something beautiful for God is indeed possible and the Lord wants to do this for each one of us. But it requires that we turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God every day in a spirit of surrender, willing to give up our own ideas and plans to embrace those of the Lord as did Isaiah, Paul and Simon-Peter.
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