Sinners’ Sunday – The Vocation to Holiness of Life
Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-22; Luke 5:1-11
Today is sinners’ Sunday because the Lord gives priority to the calling of sinners to become his prophets and messengers. Either in the Temple/Church or at one’s duty post, God calls us to become his prophets and messengers.
God’s call of Isaiah and Peter does not exhaust locative examples God’s encounter. The New Testament provides others contexts where we meet God, like Jesus’ encounter with Matthew/Levi at the customs’ office, and Zaccheus’ sycamore climbing escapade. In a word, everybody is called by God wherever they are.
The lesson in the call of Isaiah is the emphasis on the fact that God comes calling us after our birth, not just from the womb (contrast Jeremiah’s call). As for Isaiah, it was a double call to repentance and to become a prophet: “And I said: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts’” (Isaiah 6:5).
The consciousness of God’s presence and the realization of our individual vocations need an encounter with God to unfold. Isaiah makes his confession of guilt, after encountering the Lord: “for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts’”. The scandal of Isaiah stems from why God should appear and call a sinner to become a prophet! The same scandal continues today when we see those we consider “unholy” ministers of God!
Nevertheless, God appears to Isaiah as the three-fold Holy-One, and it is the holiness of God that reveals the sinfulness of Isaiah to him. In Isaiah, we see how God uses even sin and sinfulness as an occasion for conversion and vocation. God does not appear to condemn sinners (Iike Isaiah), but to let them know that they are qualified to go after other sinners like themselves to announce the love of God to them and God’s call to them to embrace holiness of life.
The call of Isaiah teaches us that every sinner needs both conversion and enlistment as a prophet or God’s messenger. Furthermore, we learn that priests and prophets are fellow sinners with the same vocation as other sinners, the vocation to repentance, and the challenge to live a holy life. God’s initiative to call and purify a sinner, like Isaiah, to become his messenger, shows that even a sinner, by sinning, is not disqualified from the vocation to holiness. In fact, the reason that a sinner is qualified to preach to other sinners as their priest and prophet is that he also enjoys God’s forgiveness and endures human weaknesses that God alone is able to purify. Therefore, there is no room for holier-than-thou attitude; we are all sinners!
Sometimes, sinners struggle with sins, and they are tempted to give up because their struggles seem to be futile and endless! Rather, we must consider moments of discouragement as vocation scenarios as well!
The call of Simon Peter is a call, not only of a sinner, but the vocation of a man who knows human weakness and despair all too well. The profession of a fisherman can be very discouraging, especially when that is all one knows how to do, and one’s sustenance depends on it: “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing” (Luke 5:5). Imagine the number of times fruitless labor was the lot of Peter, how many times his wife must have called him a loser, and his family went to bed hungry! Yet, on this faithful day, after toiling and moiling all through the night, a man (Jesus) says to him, after using his boat as a seat to talk to people, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4).
I suspect that Peter left his home that day with just one mission on his mind – to get food for his family and nothing else. He puts in his best, but to no avail. Then a man speaks to him and others, then tells him to go back to his job for a catch; he accepts, and it turns out to be the biggest catch of his entire career! Who is this man who comes to my job and knows it better than myself, Peter must have wondered? This is the mystery of vocation, that God meets us where we are at, and reminds us of the job he has for us.
Therefore, our occupations are no accidents, God meets us at our duty posts to reveal to us how our jobs are related to the plans he has for us. Of course, we sometimes hate our jobs and wish for other careers. It may be that God is looking on, waiting for us to realize his presence and hear his call!
Whether from our sinfulness, like Isaiah’s, or our jobs, like Simon Peter’s, God comes along to call us to serve him as his priests, prophets and leaders in human communities. Our second reading tells us why God does this: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Vocation is a free-gift (grace) of God; no one qualifies for it, but God qualifies those whom he calls. In the very midst of your failures and my messiness, God still calls us to our vocations to holiness of life (first reading), confidence in God’s presence and providence (gospel reading) and the grace that sustains the mission he entrusts to us (second reading).
Humility must characterize our vocation because each person has a history that is not always glorious. Paul, whether he persecuted the church in ignorance or not, sees his vocation as God’s grace which requires total dedication because it isn’t based on merit: “Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9).
Like Paul, whatever our past may be, let us live out our vocations with hope and confidence in the goodness of God. For, losers are also called: this is sinners’ Sunday – the vocation to holiness of life.
Assignment for the Week:
This week, could you encourage a sinner or an atheist that his/her situation is not hopeless?
Thanks so much Fr. Ayo. Very inspiring