UNDESERVING, BUT CALLED AND SENT!
[BREAKING THE BREAD OF GOD’S WORD]
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C
February 7, 2016
UNDESERVING, BUT CALLED AND SENT!
Isaiah was not just a great prophet. He, too, was a great
man, if greatness begins with being honest – emotionally honest, first and
foremost – and morally so, too. He had no lofty dreams for himself, no
ambition. He just took things as they came … yes, including the experience of
being privy to a divine manifestation of the “Lord, seated on a high and lofty
throne.”
Isaiah was gifted with the vision of God’s holiness, His
transcendence, His stark otherness. But he was gifted, too, with an honest view
of who he was: “a man of unclean lips.”
But while greatness may begin with emotional and moral
honesty, it is enriched and made complete with utter availability. Having heard
God’s question: “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah responds forthwith: “Here I am.
Send me.”
Honesty, modesty (humility) and availability are never
mutually exclusive. Isaiah was honest enough to cry: “Woe is me. I am doomed!”
St. Paul was accepting enough of the truth to proclaim: “For I am the least of
the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church
of God.”
But the truth of their unworthiness – even, rottenness – is
complemented by the greater truth of their being graced, saved, redeemed by no
less than the one who called them. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and
his grace to me has not been ineffective.”
Dear friends, this, too, is my story, and your story.
Let me explain a bit. You see, I don’t deserve at all to
have the privilege and honor of doing what I have been doing for several
decades now as a priest. Like most Filipinos, I don’t come from a pedigreed
family. Like most everyone else in this country, I come from the boonies. I
have no birthright to anything … to education, to fame, to fortune.
But by the grace of God, I am what I am … This, by the way,
is what I printed in my invitation to my first Mass many years ago. This is the
honest truth. I lay no claim to anything that I possess and acquired, including
my relatively good education, and everything else.
But I would like you to know today that there is something
great and deep and noble that you and I are called to do. The Lord, the same
Lord who has called us, undeserving though we all are, now tells us to probe
deeper, to work harder, to go the extra mile … Put out into the deep.
He tells us, incapable, unworthy, and un-pedigreed though we
may be, to lower our nets for a catch.
And after more than three decades of putting out into the
deep … after so many years trying to do what He tells us to do … after
mistakenly thinking so many times that the successes we may have had are due to
our human capacities, the truth eventually stares us in the face, and puts us right
back where we ought to belong … “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
Yes, the truth remains and will forever remain … We are all
unworthy and undeserving servants who are only called to do what He commands.
But the more than three decades of failures and successes
only have taught me the wisdom that can only come from an honest acceptance of
who and what we are … sinful, unworthy, and undeserving, but called and sent by
Him who alone can do wonders in and through you and me …
Put out into the deep … and lower your nets for a catch!
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