Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time; Cycle C, February 7, 2010

Opening Prayer of the Liturgy (the Collect)

Guard your family, we ask you, O Lord, with your continual mercy, so that what is begun in the hope alone of celestial grace may be guarded always by your protection. Through our Lord.

Latin: Familiam tuam quaesumus, Domine, continua pietate custodi, ut quae in sola spe gratiae caelestis innitur, tua semper protectione muniamur. Per Dominum.

Meditation (please read the selections as given from your Bible of Sunday Missal)
Readings: Isaiah 6.1-8; 1st Corinthians 15.1-11; Luke 5.1-11

Consider the similarities between the First Reading from Isaiah and the Gospel Reading from St. Luke. Both readings proclaim that with eyes of faith the believer can experience the Presence of God in all its glory and transforming power.

Isaiah describes the vision of the Presence of God in the Temple. God’s Presence dwells in the Temple in Jerusalem for those Israelites who approach those holy precincts with faith in the presence of the glory of God. The reading from Isaiah describes a contemplative experience. The immediacy of God invades the interior space of the believer as well as the Temple. The believer’s consciousness at the deepest levels is filled with the Presence of God.

Being enveloped in the Presence of God best explains the union we have with God. Union with God is not absorption into the essence of God so that we lose the identity of our person. Eastern religions call enlightenment an absorption into the All so that the soul (which they teach is itself an illusion) is now essentially identical with the All. This is a form of pantheism in which God and the enlightened individual are but one being. No, in the Hebrew revelation and in the Christian fulfillment of the Hebraic prophecies, we become like God in the grace of participation. We are adopted into the Trinitarian relationship. We are one with God, but we are always other than God.

Presence demands that the beloved and the lover are one to the other. Otherwise how can we contemplate and rejoice in the One Who is All if we form one substance with the All? We are always other so we can know and love the Beloved. We are one with God, sharing the divine life by the grace of participation. Eternal life consists in our ever being one with God in Presence: “This is eternal life—that they may know Thee, the only true God and Him Whom Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. (St. John 17.3).

The Gospel Reading shows forth the Presence of God in the Person of the Son of God, Jesus, incarnate in human nature. Jesus is Lord of all creation. The schools of fish are at His command. Without hesitation the fish obey their creator by swimming into the net. It is a more homely manifestation of God’s glory than the vision within the majestic Temple. But for the people of faith like Peter, James and John, they see the Glory of God in Jesus. Thus the disciples are in awe of the Presence of God made real in Jesus, the Son of the Father. Peter throws himself at the feet of the Lord and he experiences his unworthiness as did Isaiah in his vision.

In this sign and in all the manifold revelations within Sacred Scripture Jesus enters into our life. We enter in time into each mystery of Christ’s life because being God, the Lord Jesus continues in all the aspects of his incarnate existence in time and space. Jesus, therefore, reveals God’s Glory in all the aspects of our daily life. His Presence leads us into the Father and in the Father we are in the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit brings us into Jesus, Son of the Father. And thus we are one in this eternal, triune relationship wherein each Divine Person is in the Other.

The reactions in the two readings are similar. Isaiah in the First Reading and the apostles in the Gospel Reading taste of the glory of the Presence. They see God revealed among them with eyes of faith.

The immediate reaction of the participants in these readings is the keen sense of their unworthiness. In the light of God’s holiness, our own sinfulness and our puniness stand out. In Isaiah the reaction is: Woe is me, I am doomed for I am a man of unclean lips, living among people of unclean lips yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts! The reaction of Peter is similar: Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man.

Part of the pain of the contemplative life is as we draw closer to God we are more aware of sinfulness. The divine light becomes like a microscope so that we can see the million of germs that inhabit our surfaces. This awareness of our faults is not an obstacle. On the contrary the awareness is part of the purification process and contributes to our sense of dependence upon God as our Savior.

The greatest requirement of the contemplative life is humility. In humility we can accept our fallen condition and offer it to God’s mercy with a quiet sense of trust and joy.

In contemplative prayer practice, only the infused theological virtues of faith, hope and love can empower us to be in union with the Triune God. This dependence on God’s embrace of us in love is especially needed in those moments when we are reminded by a recent sin or imperfection how really miserable we are in our daily life, especially in our relations with others. The realization of our condition should not prevent our prayer; rather it is the basis of true prayer.

The response on the part of God in the First and Gospel readings is the same. Our sinfulness is not an obstacle. It is rather the occasion of God’s mercy in which God is glorified. In Isaiah we read: Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it. See, he said, now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin is purged.

In the Gospel reading Jesus reassures Peter, because as he will gradually learn, he will experience that in Him is unending forgiveness, “seven times seventy.” Do not be afraid.

The final action in these two readings is also similar. In both, the final action is the commission to do the work of the Kingdom. Divine intimacy means ultimately work in the Kingdom. In Isaiah we read: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here am I. Send me!” The conclusion to the Gospel reading is similar. Do not be afraid. From now on you will be catching men.

The difference in the two readings is the contrast between the simplicity and ordinariness of the Gospel story and the majestic, visionary aspect of Isaiah.

The Gospel involves working men who labor upon the unpredictable seas with the tools of their trade, their boat and nets. We witness the hiddenness of Jesus who walks upon our earth, requiring the assistance of a boat and its owners so that He could preach from the boat. It is the ordinariness of our daily life that we bring to God in our prayer. It is there in the happenings of our real life that we live in the divine Presence in love.

The Second Reading from 1st Corinthians teaches us that we receive the Spirit of the Risen Lord within us that transforms us. We receive the Word within the teaching and preaching of the Church. As Catholics we know that Sacred Scripture is the Book of the Church. The Bible came from God through the Church. The Bible is a Ruler, a Standard, a Canon, presenting the teachings of Christ and the reality of the mystery of Christ to subsequent members of the Church. But the Bible is only part of the work of revelation. More important is the process whereby the deposit of faith is safeguarded and handed on through the ministry of the bishops in communion with the Pope. I handed on to you first of what I myself received.

The Second Reading brings us full circle. The place of the Presence is now within the Church. The Church in her fullness is the Sacrament of Christ upon earth, in the midst of the world, among all the unfolding of history. The Church is the present Mystery of Christ in which we enter into the divine union. You cannot separate the Church from the spirituality of contemplative union with God. I handed on to you first of all what I myself received is the great “Traditio.” The “traditio” is the handing on of the Word and Sacraments which is essentially the mystery of the Christ-life-resurrected in which we live and move now in the power of grace that transforms us.

This Church is not merely some spiritual invisible entity with only fragmented church bodies struggling on earth. To believe that is to denigrate the power of Christ who said He would abide with His Church till the end of time and that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. The Church, the fullness of Christ’s Church, subsists visibly in the Catholic Church with its unbroken line of apostolic “traditio”—the handing on down from generation to generation of the deposit of faith, yet with all the human institutional problems of a Church composed of members awaiting final redemption on the Last Day.

Here is the common three-fold thread running throughout this Sunday’s readings: The vision of God’s Presence in the Temple of the Old Testament; the coming of the Word Made Flesh among us as proclaimed in the New Testament; and the continuance of Christ our life, light and love within the Body of Christ, the Church. The readings invite us into that same Presence through faith, hope and love. Within the Eucharist we are in the Sacrament of Christ’s Resurrection—we are at the root of our life within the Triune God. Brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and in which you stand firm (Second Reading).

Again we testify to it. This is the grace we proclaim in these meditations. Living in the fullness of the Church and the unfolding of our contemplative vocation are organically one. At the heart of the Catholic Church we are one with the mystery of Christ Risen and through Him with the Triune God, and thus we are at the heart of the mission of humanity’s redemption. We are reminded of St. Therese’s “mission statement”: “I wish to be love at the heart of the Church, our Mother.”

The contemplative life is one of love, flowing from the Presence, and its end and purpose is the redemption of the human race. We answer the call out of the Presence: Whom shall I send? Here I am. Send me. … Do not be afraid. From now on you will be catching men.






--William C. Fredrickson, Obl.OSB, D.Min.