Fifth Sunday in Ordinary
Time
Last Friday my friends and I
went ice fishing. We spent the whole
morning, from early morning until noon.
And my friends caught a lot of sunnys but I caught three tiny crappies. Obviously I grew up as a farmer not as a
fisher.
When I read and reflected on
today’s gospel I felt a little bit luckier than Peter who had spent the whole
night fishing but caught nothing. Peter
is not the only one who spent the whole night working but caught nothing. We too, many of us identify ourselves in this
situation. In the same thing, in
something that we have been working on all day long, and keeps us up at night. In Peter’s situation we can hear our own
voice, the voice of weariness, the voice of frustration and failure.
There were many times we
tried to work hard but it didn’t go anywhere, we became frustrated and we
became disappointed.
So in my homily for today I
want to reflect with you about those moments in our lives, those moments when
we fail, when we try to do something really hard but we could not succeed at
first.
Now talking about Peter and
his career as a fisherman I think we need to know a little bit about the Sea of
Galilee, because Peter grew up around the shores of this
And from the gospel we heard
that in His public life Jesus moved around the areas of this lake. He moved around Bethsaida, Methbala,
Capernaum, Tyre and Sidon. And those are
all fishing towns and villages. And from
those lakeside fishing people Jesus called his twelve disciples. He called Peter and Andrew, James and John,
and even the tax collector Matthew, all are from the fishing town called
Capernaum. But what do we learn from the
gospel today. The Sea of Galilee is a
wonderful place for fishing. It is a
land of fishermen. But an experienced
fisherman like Peter, who grew up in this environment all of his life, who had
a lot of experience in fishing on the Sea of Galilee, still in the gospel of this
week worked hard all night long but caught nothing.
This failure of Peter’s
reminds ourselves, you and I, all of us about our limitations, our weaknesses,
our shortcomings and our own failures.
Failure—how do we define that? It
is something we experience daily. Some
of them are insignificant, just a minor mistake and failure that we make in our
daily lives. Some are more
significant. We play the game and we
lose. We try to obey the speed limits,
the stop signs, but sometimes we still get pulled over for speeding or running
the stop sign. I was many times. And there are other significant failures that
we face in our lives that affected our businesses, our careers, our married
lives and our relationships with people around us. Some young people came and told me, “Father,
we have tried very hard but we could not stop our divorce. Something we could not help and we failed.”
In today’s gospel after a
bad night of fishing, after a long night of catching no fish Peter’s reaction
is predictable. It is understandable
when Peter said, “Lord we have worked hard all night long and have caught
nothing.” We ourselves, in our lives
have been saying that for so many times, “We have worked all night or all day
hard.” But the things that we want to
achieve, the thing that we want to succeed at we didn’t go anywhere. But what Peter said later matters. He said, “Must follow Your command, I will
lower the net.” That matters. That tells us that Peter acknowledges his
weakness, his failure and he placed his trust in the Lord and in himself with
the help of God.
Now in Peter, by saying, “Go
to the deeper water and lower your net for another catch” Jesus saw in Peter
something else. He saw in Peter his
potential. He saw in the fisherman the
ordinary man one day would become the fisher of people. It is very human for Peter to see his own
sinfulness and unworthiness by saying to Jesus, “Depart from me Lord, for I am
a sinful man.”
Haven’t we ever looked into
ourselves and said that to God? We are
all sinners, God. But not depart
ourselves, help us to overcome those temptations and difficulties in our
lives. It is similar to the contrast to
the holiness of God and the prophet Isaiah’s uncleanness when he said to the
Might Lord, “Woe is me. I am
doomed. I am the man of unclean
lips.” We do in our lives just like
Isaiah and Peter. Filled with
limitations and failures and sinfulness and unworthiness.
But we need God’s grace and
help to keep going. Not to give up. To keep going. To ask God for help. To ask Him for strength, for support, for
grace because we know that Jesus is always there to support us. Just like the way He spoke to Peter today,
“Do not be afraid.” We should not be
afraid of anything because we have Jesus with us. We should not give up but try to overcome any
difficulties and temptations in our lives because God is with us. Of course sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes is so hard to overcome those little
tiny bad habits. Someone who was trying
to quit smoking once told me, “Father I tried and I stopped smoking two packs
of cigarettes a week, but now I smoke three packs a week.” He tried and tried and tried but now he
smokes more. Not two packs per week but
three packs per week.
Sometimes we try some little
thing that bothers us and we think we will never get rid of it. Something that keeps us from going closer to
God and with others.
Here we are today, this
morning in the Church of St. Alphonsus.
We listen to the gospel today and I believe that this gospel is the
perfect one to talk about vocations to the priesthood and religious life. I am not one of the vocation directors like
Father Tat or Brother Larry who came here a couple weeks ago. But this passage always resonates something
deep inside me. I wonder how wonderful it
was, those first disciples, Peter and Andrew, James and John, could leave
everything behind to follow Jesus. Their
families, their parents, their careers, their future, their everything. We are all disciples and followers of
Christ. You and I, all of us, and we
have been called to be so, but have we left behind in following Jesus? Haven’t we left behind our unbelief in God?
Haven’t we left behind the hatred for some people who we don’t like? Haven’t we left behind our attachments to
many things in this material world?
In this Eucharist we ask
Jesus, we ask Him for help and for support, to live out our call, to be
faithful to our discipleship of Jesus to the vocation that each of us has been
given by God.