Gospel according to Saint Luke 5:1-11:
While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.
Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man
Luis CASASUS President of the Idente Missionaries
Rome, February 09, 2025 | V Sunday in Ordinary Time
Is 6: 1-2a.3-8; 1Cor 15: 1-11; Lk 5: 1-11
I am a sinful man. Peter’s statement is intelligent and humble – two qualities that usually go hand in hand – for in recognizing that he is a sinner, he admits something proper to all humans, as universal as having a head or a heart. Not only does he accept that he made a mistake, but he accepts the advice he cannot understand: he casts his nets again.
In reality, few are those who fully admit their mistakes. If you were to ask me my personal experience, I would say that I have met fewer than five people capable of doing so (I am not among them). Guilt or no guilt, we are victims of rationalizing our mistakes, which is not the same as lying.
Although rationalization is similar to lying, there are important differences. Lying is a conscious attempt to deceive, while rationalization often occurs primarily outside of full consciousness. And while both conceal a person’s true motives for selfish purposes, rationalization does not allow him to be fully aware of his true motivations. It is a mechanism of self-deception.
Rationalization pushes us to justify behaviors, thoughts or feelings through logical explanations. Although these explanations may seem reasonable, they disguise unacceptable thoughts and do not accurately represent a person’s true feelings and motivations. Apparently intelligent human beings, and those of us who are not so intelligent, practice this rationalization in a variety of ways:
Minimize the situation. It really isn’t a crime to forget my daughter’s birthday.
Make excuses. Truth be told, the end of the semester entails such a heavy workload that I didn’t have time to answer your call.
Blaming others. I had to raise my voice because they didn’t do their work on time.
Making comparisons. I may be uncommunicative, but Federico is unbearable with his endless speeches.
The disciple of Christ does not have to be enslaved by these mechanisms, because he knows that he is not alone, he has experience of the divine presence and response. For thousands of years, wise men and women have been able to recognize their miseries, but also a more important reality: that God has decided to choose us as instruments of his kingdom.
How can he who is born of a woman be clean? If even the moon has no brightness and the stars are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, that larva, the son of man, that worm! (Job 25: 4-6). But the response of the one who sees himself surrounded by signs of the Holy Spirit, invaded by the same Affliction that the divine persons feel for every man is the same that we heard today from Isaiah: Here I am, send me. The divine presence destroys both pride and fear.
The purification that the authentic disciple receives frees him from the need to secure his self-esteem, to feel satisfied with his efforts. It makes him capable of following Christ not “in spite of” impotence, contrariety and aridity, but thanks to the freedom provided by that spiritual hygiene not foreseen by him and executed by the Holy Spirit. Peter detached himself from his judgments as an expert fisherman and accepted
—ooOoo—
The divine instrument of surprise. When Jesus found some fishermen sitting on the shore, repairing the nets after spending a long night without catching anything, they had reason to feel dejected and skeptical. The fishermen, accustomed to the difficulties of their trade, were realistic people and did not live on daydreams. Certainly, before the encounter that the Gospel relates today, these fishermen had followed Jesus, had witnessed some of his miracles for a year; for example, they saw the conversion of water into wine, saw him talking with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well, and probably saw in Capernaum the healing of the son of the official who approached the Master. But for some reason, perhaps family needs or lack of conviction, they had returned to their office at the lake of Gennesaret.
Today, however, something different happened. Christ allowed them to be an active part in the miracle, as they would later be in the multiplication of the loaves. Peter felt that the Master had touched the depths of his being, with that prodigious sign he understood the invitation that Christ made to him, to be a fisher of men. Those who know the Bible say that the word used by Christ means “to capture alive” those men, that is, to free them from the death to which sin leads. We well know that, in the Bible, the waters represent the unknown, the power of evil, the danger. But more than the wonder of the miracle, what is important is its unexpected nature, the moment in which it occurs, when these disciples were no longer walking with the Master.
As Pope Francis says, our God is a God of surprises and knows how to use them to attract us. In particular, he knows how to call us when we do not imagine it, when we have just been unfaithful and when we feel weak. I made you a prophet to the nations. Then I said, “Ah, Lord! I do not know how to speak, for I am young (Jer 1: 5-6).
You may have heard of Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl who lived in Lourdes, France. Mary, Our Mother, appeared to her in a grotto on February 11, 1858 and asked her to dig a hole in the ground and drink the water there.
Any 14-year-old would have enough sense to think this was absurd and crazy. However, with people watching her, Bernadette knelt down and dug in the ground with her bare hands. And when the muddy water began to pool in the hole she had dug, she scooped it up to drink.
Obviously, people thought that what she had done was absurd and that she had gone crazy. And, in fact, she looked dirty and muddy and looked like a lunatic.
What Bernadette did was absurd, mad. But from the place where she dug, the waters became cleaner and cleaner and gushed forth in a spring.
And now, millions of pilgrims go to the Marian shrine of Lourdes to bathe in the healing waters and even drink them. So from what seemed to be an absurd act of Bernadette, God manifested his healing grace and forgiveness of sins through the waters of the Lourdes spring.
A few days ago, in Ibarra (Ecuador), two young people who had participated in our Idente Mission, which reaches remote corners of the country, told how they found themselves in a forgotten village in the mountains, a four-hour drive from Loja. Just at the moment of their arrival, an old man who was in bed died and the whole family began to sing, full of joy, saying that these young people had brought peace to their dear grandfather, after 30 years sick in bed and the message that they were waiting for him in heaven. The family threw a party and invited them to the simple religious ceremony of the funeral.
The surprise, the unexpected, the unplanned, is used by the Holy Spirit to confirm our vocation.
—ooOoo—
Christ did not want to fish alone. In fact, his invitation to Peter was addressed to all those present and the Gospel text states, in the plural, that they followed him. We must not forget that the vocation is to follow Christ together with someone.
This following is not to work spectacular wonders, but to show by our witness that merciful love is possible with everyone and at all times. Charity among us cannot be based on a unity of tastes, opinions or preferences. Several times I have seen how gestures of mercy, patience and understanding towards a brother or sister with a complicated character, have been the trigger for a vocation in those who witnessed these acts of forgiveness and acceptance. Christ is not mistaken in calling “difficult” people to Himself, for it is also through them that we find the will of God.
But it is true that when there is mutual effort in helping, caring and compassion among us, everything becomes easier to understand and to live for those who were destined to be fish for the kingdom of heaven. That is why, since the beginning of Christianity, since the beginning of Jesus’ preaching, we are invited to abandon our nets, what we think is our strength, our reasons, our most important effort, what we have in our hands and what we do not want to be interrupted in.
Already the shepherds had left their flock in the night, the most dangerous time, to meet the newborn Child. But our response is the same as Peter’s first reaction: I know what I am doing and I don’t like it when someone thinks differently; besides, I am really tired. May we imitate him rather in his obedience, his readiness to be taken by surprise.
The man who was going to bury his recently deceased father did not receive from Jesus a condolence, but a rebuke for his mediocrity. What I am doing right now is not enough, even if burying the dead is a work of mercy! The hard work of fishing is not enough, even if it is the family’s livelihood.
If we persevere, we will see that even the catch will always be more than expected. Another surprise from the Holy Spirit.
_______________________________
In the Sacred Hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Luis CASASUS
President
