Homily for 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Feb. 9, 2025
Luke 5: 1-11
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

(by James Tissot)

“Master, … at your command I’ll lower the nets” (Luke 5: 5).

It seems that Simon is already a disciple of Jesus, which would be consistent with what St. John tells us in the 1st chapter of his Gospel (1:40-42).  Altho he’s not yet fully committed to Jesus, Simon lets Jesus use his boat as a pulpit, and he addresses him as “Master.”  But only at the end of this story does he, along with James and John, “leave everything and follow him” (5:11).

It’s noteworthy that Simon listens to Jesus.  He’s a professional fisherman.  He knows the lake, the fish, the times and seasons.  Jesus is a carpenter or builder who was raised in a town 15 miles inland from the Sea of Galilee.  What does he know about fishing as a livelihood?  But Simon heeds his directive to put out on the lake and lower his nets, contrary to all his own knowledge and experience.

Worldly knowledge and experience aren’t the criteria for judging God’s work.  For example, there’s no reasonable explanation for the Catholic Church’s survival for almost 2,000 years in spite of persecution, heresy, schism, gross sins, and other failings.  Only Christ’s continued presence, as he promised, can explain it.

In our personal lives, too, God’s wisdom surpasses ours.  St. Paul comments on that at some length in ch. 1 of 1st Corinthians, starting when he states, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it’s the power of God” (1:18).  When Christ’s Church presents to us his understanding of morality—in what concerns human dignity, sexual ethics, business ethics, social justice, the meaning of marriage—we must listen, as Simon listened to Jesus.  When the Church explains the meaning of the sacraments, such as the Eucharist and Holy Orders, we must listen and not be deceived by what our 5 senses perceive or what today’s culture thinks.

Simon’s perception misled him in one respect.  Having seen the power of God at work in Jesus, he begs, “Depart from me, Lord, for I’m a sinful man” (5:8).  In this, he resembles the prophet Isaiah, who trembled before the awesome holiness of God:  “Woe is me!  I’m doomed!  For I’m a man of unclean lips” (6:5), i.e., I’m sinful, unworthy of standing in God’s presence and ought to perish—like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Yes, Simon certainly was a sinner, and presumably Isaiah was too.  As am I, and you.  At a diaconal or priestly ordination, at the beginning of the ritual a superior or someone else presents the candidate to the bishop, requesting that “N., our brother, be ordained to the priesthood [or diaconate].”  The bishop asks, “Do you know him to be worthy?”  The presenter responds, “After inquiry among the Christian people and upon recommendation of those responsible, I testify that he has been found worthy.”

At a Salesian ordination at St. Benedict’s Church in 2015, Cardinal Dolan began his homily by asking the candidate, “Michael, are you worthy?”, which rather surprised not only our confrere (I wasn’t the Michael being ordained) but, I think, everyone.  Then the cardinal said emphatically, “You’re not worthy.”  Pause.  “No one’s worthy.”

At every Mass, in fact, we proclaim, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,” i.e., that you should come to my person and be with me, spiritually or sacramentally.  At every Mass, before reading the gospel, the priest bows before the altar and prays, “Cleanse my heart and my lips, almighty God, that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.”  The priest and all of us need purification by the grace of our Lord Jesus.

It was precisely to cleanse sinners that the Son of God came among us.  To carry on his sacred ministry of bringing God’s grace to sinners, of “fishing for people,” as Jesus says to Simon (5:10), Jesus can use only sinful people as his priests, sisters, brothers, deacons, catechists, or other ministers.  There’s no one else!  Only people of unclean lips, sinful men and women.

Evangelical Christians like to say that God doesn’t call the qualified; he qualifies the called.  In other words, tho we’re not worthy that he come to us and work thru us, he does the cleansing and the purifying.  He renders people worthy of being his followers and his ministers by the power of his own grace.  “Lord, I am not worthy.  Only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.”  Simon Peter will be worthy of becoming an apostle because Jesus will see to it.  Likewise, Jesus touches you and me so that we are worthy to be his friends and even his partners in redeeming the world.