Homily for Thursday, Week 22 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday
22d Week of Ordinary Time

Sept. 2, 2021
Luke 5: 1-13
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Home, New Rochelle, N.Y.      

“He taught the crowds from the boat” (Luke 5: 3).

The heart of Jesus’ ministry is teaching—teaching about his Father, teaching people to put themselves into his Father’s hands.  Luke still hasn’t informed us of any specifics except miraculous healings—which reinforce his words and help give them authority.

Evidently his words have had an impact on Simon—his words and his healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, mentioned in yesterday’s gospel along with many other healings and exorcisms (Luke 4:38-44).  So Simon is quite willing to let Jesus use his boat as a pulpit.

That’s not all Simon’s willing to do.  He, a fisherman, is willing to obey a carpenter, to put out onto the lake and lower his nets in spite of his personal knowledge of the business (5:5).

The reward—the payoff—for Simon and his partners is immediate and astounding.  Also astounding is that Jesus then calls these 4 whom he has made aware of their unworthiness, their sinfulness (5:8), in the face of the divine power.

Jesus will speak later of having come to call sinners (5:32).  It’s a greater miracle than catching fish unexpectedly.  God loves us tho we’re undeserving, even when we are sinners, and his desire is to catch us and draw us into the boat of salvation.  He’ll turn Simon’s fishing boat into the bark of Peter, the vessel from which he still teaches humanity the ways of our heavenly Father and the vessel from which he continues to fish for sinners, to make them “fit to share in the inheritance of the saints in light,” as St. Paul writes to the Colossians (1:12).