Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

The Invasion of Divine Grace

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Gregory the Great Church, North Branch, MN

Sunday, February 6, 2022

The first reading from Isaiah 6 and the Gospel from Luke 5 are wonderful parallel accounts of two great biblical figures who have been called by God. Isaiah is sitting and praying in the holy Temple in the year when King Uzziah died. Suddenly, God breaks into his life with stupendous power. Isaiah says, “I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple.” One thing about great and powerful spiritual experiences is that we don’t forget them. They mark and define our life. What happened to Isaiah is the invasion of grace— gift. Grace comes without our asking for it or manipulating it. Grace means you are loved even though you are unlovable. You are invited even though you don’t deserve it. There is always a sense of not being worthy. Having experienced the breakthrough of grace, having seen the Lord in his glory, Isaiah acknowledges his unworthiness, “Woe to me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips.” After that what does God do? He does not deny Isaiah’s unclean lips. He does not tell him he is great and his lips are fine. God sends an angel to purify his lips. With his lips made clean, Isaiah is able to respond to God’s summon, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”

In the Gospel, Jesus is at the shore of the sea preaching. Without asking for permission, and without being invited, Jesus gets into Simon’s boat and begins to give orders. For a first century Galilean fisherman, a boat meant a lot. It wasn’t just a means of transportation, it was his whole livelihood. It is like his shop, a place of doing his business. Imagine someone getting into your car uninvited and then starts telling you where to go. I believe you would be fearful and furious. This is the New Testament version of the invasion of grace. Peter didn’t ask for it. He wasn’t expecting it or expecting some big changes in his life. He and his colleagues had worked hard all night without catching any fish. By morning, they were getting ready to go home in disappointment. Then, Jesus shows up, enters his boat, and begins to give orders. He tells Peter, “Duc in Altum!” i.e. “put out into the deep” water. Every encounter with God is always an invitation, a summon to go into the deep. Some of us spend our lives fooling around by the sea shore, and living in the shallows. We may be exceedingly successful in the eyes of the world, but spiritually speaking, we are living our lives at the sea shore. Like little kids, we are playing on the sand without putting our feet into the water. But God doesn’t want that for us. He wants to bring us into the depth. So, he breaks into Peter’s life. He gets into Peter’s boat and orders him to stop playing around. 

After being ordered to go into the deep, Peter protests, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the net.” He is an experienced fisherman. He knows the water; he knows how to fish in it. You may have experience this as well. The Lord breaks in uninvited and then calls you into deep water. And you probably say some version of what Peter said: Well, I have been trying all my life to find happiness, to find peace, to find spiritual meaning and yet find nothing. And that’s just the point. You are trying on your own terms. And as long as your trying is your own business, your own project, you are not going to get it. Look at Peter! The great moment happens when he willingly cooperates with grace. In every encounter with God, grace comes first. But once grace breaks through, God wants us to cooperate with his love. God does not turn us into passive puppets. He wants to waken our minds, wills, hearts, bodies, energies in cooperation. As soon as Peter follows the promptings of grace, he finds so many fish that his boat begins to sink. Some people came to help him to prevent his boat from going under. What does this mean? When you allow Jesus to get into your life, you let him command you, you allow him to be the Lord of your life, you stop playing along the sea shore, you stop playing around with our own projects, you are going to find so much life that overwhelms you and in fact, attracts other people to take in some of the life you have been given. This is exactly what we find in the life of all the saints. People get attracted to the saints. Why? Because there is so much life and grace around them. 

In the wake of this invasion of grace, Simon acknowledges his sin: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Consider this! The acknowledgment of sin did not come from the very beginning. It is not the sine qua non for grace. It is not when you say you are sorry that grace is given to you. That’s not how it works. The confession of sin is always the consequence of the invasion of grace. In the light of Christ, in the light that Christ brings, Peter sees his own inadequacies. When you compare your life and the life that Jesus is offering you, you will definitely acknowledge your sinfulness. One of the signs that you are not doing well in your spiritual life is when you are reluctant to admit your sinfulness. Once you agree that everything is fine and great with you, that’s a sign that you are not standing in the light of grace. Check this out! Jesus does not say to Peter, you are okay. God did not tell Isaiah that his lips are pure. God acknowledged it and then sent an angel to purify the lips of Isaiah. Jesus tells Peter to get up and that from now onwards he will be catching, not fish, but men. After Isaiah and Peter were purified, they were sent on mission. After Isaiah was cleansed, he declared, “Here I am, Lord, send me.” As for Simon, Jesus says to him, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” So, in these two readings, we have the breakthrough of grace, acknowledgement of sin, and the command to go on mission. That means, go and become an agent of grace for other people. 

Why does God invade our lives? Because he wants us to be fully alive. The glory of God is the human person fully alive. God does not want us to play around like kids. He wants us out in the great adventure of the spiritual life. One great lesson to be learned in these great readings is that whether at work, as is the case with Simon Peter, or in a place of worship and prayer, as in the case of Isaiah, God can always come to us. That’s why it is important to be spiritually alert, and not to be carried away or distracted by the affairs of this world because we don’t know when God is going to break in. Everything we do should be done with a keen sense of God’s presence.