When Losers are also Called: This is Sinners’ Sunday – The Vocation to Holiness of Life
Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-22; Luke 5:1-11
Last Sunday, the call of Jeremiah tells us that God has a mission for every human being. To be called from one’s mother’s womb confirms God’s eternal destiny for every life on earth; at least, we are clearly no products of chance and co-incidence. The Roman Catholic Church got it right to baptism infants, to claim every life for God because God has a plan for his children, as he proves to us in the call of Jeremiah. Even when they are aborted and denied the opportunity to explore their relationship with God through a premature and premeditated death, foetuses are human beings with a vocation too.
For those of us who survived abortion, our readings take us a step further in the mystery of vocation, with the examples of two kinds of calling: Isaiah’s and Simon Peter’s. Like Jeremiah, all of us have been called from our mother’s womb and entrusted with our individual vocations; the part of the story of vocation in the womb is better known to God than to us, human beings, because we were neither there nor conscious of what was happening at the beginnings of our existence. What is different in the call of Isaiah is the emphasis on the fact that God comes calling us after our birth; 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 take a scenario to unfold. Isaiah makes his confession of guilt, “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! 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. See how God uses even sin and sinfulness as an occasion for conversion and vocation. God didn’t appear to condemn the sinner (Isaiah), but to let the sinner know that he is qualified to go after other sinners to announce the love of God to them and God’s call to them to embrace holiness of life.
The call of Isaiah is a call to every sinner to become a missionary and prophet to other sinners. A priest, prophet and leader, is a fellow sinner 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 for the vocation of 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 weaknesses that God alone is able to purify. There is no room for holier-than-thou attitude, we are all sinners!
Sometimes a sinner struggles with sin and he/she is tempted to give up because his/her struggles seem to be futile! Moments of discouragements are 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 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 to get food for his family, and nothing else. He puts in his best 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 carrier! Who is this man who comes to my job and knows it better than myself, he 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 situations are related to the plans he has for us. Of course, we sometimes hate our jobs, and wish for other carriers. 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 acted in ignorance or not, sees his vocation as God’s grace which requires total dedication because it wasn’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?