Homily for 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2010

Whether we were baptised as infants or came to faith later on in life, sooner or later our faith meets with a challenge. If we meet the challenge we can deepen our faith. If the challenge is given little reflection we may reject our faith as a waste of time. Very often the challenge comes at times when we come up against the limitations of our very humanity. That may occur with experiences of sickness or death of someone close to us. It may be a wonderful experience like the birth of a child that fill us with wonder. It may be when our career which we have worked so hard for over many years is taken away from us in redundancy.

When we do take stock of ourselves at times like that it may not seem to be a particularly spiritual experience. Yet to embrace these kinds of experiences and reflecting on their implications can have profound results in us. There can be a deep conversion as we accept that of ourselves we are insufficient. There is a mystery in life that we cannot comprehend.

Today we read about three of the greatest spiritual people in our tradition, Isaiah, Paul and Peter. They might seem to be people whose spiritual achievements are far beyond our own. Yet they are describing a conversion that has happened to them.

Isaiah, Paul and Peter are not just expressing shame because they have done something wrong when they proclaim their unworthiness. Isaiah cries out "I am lost" when he encounters a divine presence. "I am a man of unclean lips." Paul, when he reflects on his choice to be an apostle says "I hardly deserve the name apostle." Had persecuted the Church. Peter, too, overwhelmed by the unexpected catch of fish realised he was in the presence of the divine, confessed that he was a sinful man. "Leave me, Lord."

Certainly they all realised that they were sinful but here it is more than that. They encountered the holy. They were completely humbled as they became aware of the divine presence. When we say that God is "holy" we are not saying that God is without sin in a moral sense. The "Holy, holy, holy" of the heavenly beings in Isaiah's vision, and repeated in the Sanctus of the Mass, is an affirmation that we are in the presence of something or someone that is wholly other than us, wholly other than this universe, wholly other than anything we can understand. The holy is that before which we can only stand in wonder and awe. Before such a holy one we are as nothing.

The experience of the resurrection was just such an encounter for the disciples. This is what Paul speaks of today in the second reading. To experience the risen Lord is not just to meet someone we once knew who was dead but is now alive. It is to meet the holy one of God.

This kind of resurrection experience is not confined to special times and places. For Peter and his friends it happened as they went about their daily work as fishermen. They were frustrated that they had caught nothing during a whole night of fishing. We, too, find that we can spend much time and work and achieve nothing. We can feel quite useless and disillusioned with ourselves.

Yet into this empty place in our lives God can choose to enter unexpectedly. To be open to it is to be converted. We live in an age which seems open a lot of the time only to what I want to do and think. There is little welcome for the "other" whether that be the stranger or the foreigner, let alone God.

So far from putting Isaiah, Paul and Peter down as worthless, sinful, individuals, they are called to a mission. They are each given a great responsibility in the service of their fellow human being. And that is just what we find also. If a person is open to God they usually end up being people who give so much to others in need.

Sharing in the Eucharist tells the story of our own lives in the words and actions of Jesus. It tells the story of how embracing our human limitations and being open to something greater than ourselves we are transformed. It is a privileged moment of encounter with the risen Lord. This is so even if our Sunday gathering seems mundane, our singing not the best, our children restless. Ritually we express this by being open to both God and each other as brothers and sisters in sharing from the one cup and the one loaf. To do so is to participate both in Jesus own dying and also in his resurrection. We like Isaiah, Paul and Peter are different from what we were before. We too have been given a mission.

Fr Graham