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OMELIE / Omelie EN

06 feb 2022
06/02/2022 – 5th Sunday in O. T. - year C

06/02/2022 – 5th Sunday in O. T. - year C

Reading 1 IS 6,1-2.3-8 Psalm 137 Reading 2 1COR 15,1-11 Gospel LK 5,1-11

“Because of your kindness and your truth; your name, when I called”! This is how the psalm in between the readings makes us pray. And just like that, all today’s readings help us meet the Lord’s mercy.

Isaiah is frightened because he has seen God’s glory: in fact, he is afraid to die, because he knows he is a sinner and he comes from a people of sinners. He knows God’s purity and holiness cannot go with the man’s sin. His very sin does not let him offer himself readily and generously to fulfill the mission God is calling him to see to. In this situation of embarrassment and humility God has him experience purification. An angel burns his lips, which with faithless words have given sin the possibility to take place. In this way the prophet experiences that we, men, cannot purify ourselves on our own, but we need God’s intervention. And God does it! He is not jealous of His holiness, on the contrary, He shares it with us. Purified by His fire we can offer Him our help to spread His word, so necessary to everyone, both to the faithful of His people and to those who are part of other peoples.

Simon’s experience is similar. He is not thinking of his own sin, but when he realises that Jesus’s presence next to him is God’s very presence, the Lord of earth and sea, then he wakes up, recognises his distance from Him, so his own sin. How did Peter get to this realisation? He has reached it thanks to an act of obedience. “At your command I will lower the nets”. Peter had struggled all night fruitlessly, then he had lent the boat to Jesus, not to fish, but to be able to reach everyone with His teaching, and finally he has given Him trust. I can imagine it must be very difficult for Peter to cast again the nets, so tired he was, and even more at a time of the day in which fishermen are certain no fish can be caught and, even worse, following the instructions of a man coming from Nazareth, who had never seen a lake. “At your command”.

This is the piece of news. Jesus' word is not a man’s word. Jesus' Word is strong foundation, is truth which does not need to be checked, is certainty. What is the result of the obedience to Jesus' word? Is it a net full of fish, which fills a boat, or even two, to the point they risk to sink? Not really. The result of the obedience to the Word is the fact that Simon is throwing Himself at Jesus’s feet and recognises he is a sinner. This is the miracle: the man recognises Jesus sent by God, humbles himself in front of Him, admits his condition of sinner, falls at His feet and waits for His Word. That is the miracle we see in this page of the Gospel, that is the miracle which today too the word accomplishes in our heart and our community.

This miracle happened also in Paul’s heart, who, notwithstanding the struggles faced for the gospel, recognises himself the last among everyone, the first among sinners. However, he makes me realise that recognising I am a sinner is not a disgrace, instead is the starting point for experiencing and enjoying the Father’s mercy. The apostle has persecuted the Church: every sin of mine is persecuting the Church! When faithless words are leaving my mouth, when I step in opposite directions from God, when my thoughts are full of useless things, when my time is spent without any salvation content for anyone, when I do not offer the Father my actions, or when I even do what he cannot approve, I am persecuting the Church. In front of Jesus' love I will recognise I am a sinner, and I will ask the Church to give me the forgiveness He has put in her heart and hands.