Is 6:1-2, 3-8; 1 Cor: 15:1-11; Luke 5: 1-11
Jesus was a carpenter, not a fisherman. He wasn’t supposed to know where the fish were. His power is beyond the natural. In this gospel account, Jesus is present in the lives of these people who are needy. Luke says the people are straining to listen to Jesus. They are pressing in on Jesus. They sense Jesus has something they need. The fishermen sense this, too. Peter especially knows his limits – “We’ve caught nothing” –and he comes to find out that Jesus is not nothing, but something, ‘something else,’ something more, someone more. His power is more than an ordinary carpenter’s power, more than a fisherman’s power.
Jesus is the sacrament of the presence of God – made visible. Grace is God’s presence in our lives, often in situations that are beyond us, beyond our limits. In this story, Jesus does something amazing for the fishermen, and it changes them. John Martens in America highlights that he comes in to their everyday reality; they don’t go to him in the synagogue. He meets them with his power where they are. They leave their ordinary reality, their nets. This is a change of direction, a conversion, in their lives. It transforms them into a new extraordinary reality. They were touched by the presence of God, like the coal that touched the prophet’s lips in the first reading from Isaiah.
Jesus does and wants to do the same to us. Remember, God’s presence is mediated. This account invites us to ponder persons whose presence in our lives changed us: a parent, a mentor, a high school teacher, a professor in college. This person might not have appeared churchy, but you knew this person was special. In my life, after leaving the Society of Jesus, I needed redirection. I remember the day I met Prof. Jim Nicholson at Boston University. He was an intelligent listener. I sensed that he was spiritual person. He advised me to pursue a Ph.D.. It was like, “Go out into the deep and lower your nets.” That was 1989. I still remember him. He was a presence of God for me. What about you? Such people make us believe in the presence of God in our lives. We say they are ‘God-sends.’ We are changed and we follow a new direction.
The sacraments are encounters with Christ, and they change us. The Eucharist, for example, can bring about a transformation of the feelings you may bring to Mass. The Presence can change us. It purifies us as the coal does to the prophet’s lips. We acknowledge our sin, as Peter did, and Christ in the Eucharist takes away our sins, purify us. Then, we follow as did Peter, James and John. We attract others as Jesus did. They sense something, and they what we have. By our changed presence, it’s as if we say: “Come and see.”