5TH Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, 2022

Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8;  1 CThinthians 15:1-22; Luke 5:1-11

The tapestry of our fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, 2022, is woven by God with three interconnected threads: the thread of encounter, forgiveness and new ambassadorial identity.

All three readings of this Sunday recount individuals’ encounter with God. Isaiah, in the first reading, encounters God in the Temple in Jerusalem. For Paul, in the second reading, the road to Damascus is the scene of his encounter with God. Today’s gospel makes the sea the location of Peter’s encounter with God.

There are a thousand and one places to encounter God (at the Temple, on a journey, at sea fishing). It is the realization of the presence of God that turns an experience/meeting into an encounter. Isaiah, Paul and Peter became changed and transformed persons after their encounters with God.

For any meeting with God to become an encounter, we must see ourselves differently after the encounter. For Isaiah, his sinful life confronts him. What he neglects about himself and the presence of God in the Temple become instantly realities. God cleanses him of his past sins and invites him to become his ambassador to others. The sea where Peter fishes daily as a fisherman turns into a pond of so much easy catch of fish that he realizes that the Man, Jesus, who orders him to fish is not ordinary. Peter himself confesses, go away from me, for I am a sinful man! What is the connection between a large catch of fish and sin, if not an encounter of gargantuan proportion? The Holiness that exudes from encountering God convicts human beings of sin. Paul’s case is similar. He had arrested many previously, but his journey to Damascus turns his past into blindness and his new sight into holiness! Paul explains how his encounter with Jesus turns him into an apostle that readily embraces death because the grace of God is super active in him, despite his bleak past!

An encounter with God not only reveals the dark past in us, it opens a new dawn of holiness and vocation in those who encounter God. Isaiah no longer measures himself against earthly and human standards; rather, he imitates the blinding glory of God that appears to him in the Temple and he  abandons the earthly standard of holiness that parades sin as holiness. Isaiah experiences the Temple of God as Heaven itself, with God sitting on his throne! As for Peter, the sea is no longer an office or a place to make a living as a fisherman, but a place where the Creator of the sea is present and active. Paul experiences a God who has no favorites, but accepts all those who come to him and he transforms their sinful past into a glorious future!

An encounter with God creates a permanent marriage or proximity with God. The indefatigable quest for the presence of God turns Isaiah, Peter and Paul into God’s ambassadors. They longer live for themselves, but for others and died in defense of holiness and the well-being of their brothers and sisters.

This Sunday is sinners’ Sunday. It is an invitation to step out of our sins, in order to experience the power of an encounter with God. It suffices to meet God, wherever we may be; be it in the Church like Isaiah, on a journey to do evil like Paul or at work like Peter. All that is required is to have the eyes that see and a heart that perceives. On seeing the glory of God, Isaiah never called it a dream or hallucination as some of us call such experiences today. Peter connects the easy multiple catch of fish to Jesus’ instruction to fish, where he had labored all night catching nothing. Paul makes the transition from Judaism to Christianity because the Lord who appeared to him on his way to Damascus was not dead but alive!

Today, mundane science challenges the authenticity of  Eucharistic miracles, the apparitions Mary and the saints. Miracles are equated to magic, and some of us pass off magic and theatrics for miracles just to make money and win cheap popularity. Most of us have subscribed to all kinds of freedoms that turn babies in the womb into  diseases and kill them; we spend more money on weapons than on health care and human welfare; we imprison those who challenge our culture of death by calling them fanatics, etc.

Without an encounter with God, the Church will remain a building like any other; human lives as spare parts to dispense with at will; and, we ostracise those who mention and defend the existence of God!

Sinners Sunday must become a wake up call to confront our earth with the presence of God and challenge our society to another Mount Carmel to demonstrate the unrivaled power of God, but with no killings of sinners, because our God is a God of mercy and love!

Stop complaining, do something! Isaiah did something, he became a prophet; Peter did something, he became an apostle; Paul did something, he ditched his former employers and employment and accepted Christ at the risk of being killed by the Jews. What you and I do is more important than what we say – let us act now!

 Assignment for the Week:

Go for Confession, at your convenience.