5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Sunday 7th February 2016)
You have been called to be a disciple – (Luke 5:1-11)
A few weeks ago I was blessed to attend a conference in Dallas Texas. The conference was organised by a group called FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students). At the conference there were so many great speakers who taught all of us so much about our faith.
The main theme of the conference was really discipleship, how to become a true disciple of Jesus Christ and how to draw others to be his disciples. One of the speakers made a very interesting point that has really stayed with me.
We know that in tradition the apostles carried the Good News of Jesus Christ to all parts of the world after Pentecost, they went out filled with the Holy Spirit and made disciples everywhere. These twelve men along with some other disciples of Christ are now the reason we have over one billion Catholics in the world today, they were ‘disciple makers‘, they took the Lord at His Word, and carried the Word to the hearts of all they met. But there is a person in the Gospel who was also offered the opportunity to become a disciple of Christ, but he refused. Do you remember the rich young man? He came because he wanted to follow the Lord. The Lord tells him to sell all his riches and to come follow him, but the young man was attached to his riches and he did not sell them and so he went away sad, he did not become a disciple. Now imagine if that young man had become a disciple, imagine how many more people would have heard the Gospel message in the early days of the Church, or to put it another way, imagine how many people did not hear the Good News because he did not step out.
In our Gospel this weekend, we read how the Lord, in St Luke’s Gospel, gathers his first apostles.
He meets this man called Simon who is a fisherman. You can imagine the crowds pressing around the Lord wanting to hear him and get close to him. The Lord gets into a boat, belonging to Simon, he asks him to put out a little from the shore and he teaches the people. When the Lord was finished, he asks Simon to go out into the deep water for a catch.
You can imagine how tired Simon is, having been out all night and caught nothing, and how useless it seems to him to want to go out again. But Simon has a decision to make in his heart. Does he listen to this man and to His Word or does he refuse? Simon accepts to do what Jesus asks and what happens?…… the catch is so big that they need the second boat to bring it in.
Simon knows that he has met someone special, he knows that this man is worth listening to and so when he comes ashore, he falls down in adoration before him and knows he is not worthy to be in his presence. Then the Lord offers him something, he offers him discipleship! He tells him not to be afraid and, unlike the rich young man, Simon leaves everything and follows him. Little did he know that day, that being open to the word of God who stood in his boat, by going out to cast nets, would result in him becoming Peter, the first Pope, a fisher of men and a vessel through which Jesus Christ would save untold numbers of souls.
Simon Peter gives us a template for how we too must become disciples. We must listen to the Word of God, we must allow ourselves to be challenged by that Word and even if it dosen’t make sense to us sometimes, we must follow it. Simon fell at Jesus’ feet in adoration, he spent three years with him, so must we spend time with Him to get to know Him better and then we must never let anything stop us from following Him, not profession, not public opinion, nothing.
If you think you are not ready to make disciples, don’t worry, neither was Peter, but the Lord worked on his heart for three years and then sent him out.
But remember this, you have been called to be a disciple, all of us have. If you don’t answer the call from Christ, there are certain souls that you are meant to bring the Good news to that will never hear it. God has given you a mission that no one else has been given. If you don’t carry it out then no one else can. You matter in the work of evangelisation, you are willed, you are necessary, so don’t be afraid. Let us follow in the footsteps of Peter and not go away sad like the rich young man.
Fr. James Devine