Fifth Sunday Ordinary Time Cycle C
01/25/2022
February 6, 2022
In every situation whether pleasant or unpleasant God is looking for someone to send and make Him present in the world.
Whom should I send?
Will you be the one to answer today and everyday?
The prophet Isaiah lived during the time of many difficulties for the chosen people.
They turned to the gods of the pagan people who were in the majority and were living around them. They had turned away from God.
God was looking for a mouthpiece that He could use to bring the people back to Him.
Isaiah has a vision which we hear about in the reading. Isaiah answers God's call.
I think we know that life was not easy for Isaiah. Yet he became the mouthpiece of God.
St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians is reminding them of the faith that he taught them some five years earlier. Needless to say the Corinthians were in the minority of the people living around them and they were being influenced by the pagans.
As we listen to the reading of this letter, it can be a reminder for each of us. It is so easy to forget that our baptism has called each of us, just as surely as He called St. Paul and Isaiah and all the baptized. It is important to realize that God is not necessarily calling us to take Him to a far-far off land, but to make him present in our every day situations. Our actions, and not just our words, can really make God present in a world that basically does not know Him.
Things such as compassion, forgiveness, patience, mercy, listening, helping, etc. all make God present in the world.
God often does not call the strong, but the weak, the ones with difficulties and problems. St. Paul certainly fits into that situation. He knows he was so against the Church in the beginning.
That can give each of us hope because God has certainly called each of us.
In the Gospel we hear about the calling of the first four apostles, Peter, Andrew, James, and John. They were not the smartest or necessarily the brightest. And yet they were somehow able to leave their livelihood and respond to the Lord's calling, even in their weaknesses. Let us pray for that same grace everyday.
So, it is back to us in everyday situation and everyday to answer..
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And always, if we discover we failed to answer the call "Send me", in a particular difficult situation, then we have discovered something about ourselves just as Peter did in the Gospel.
Then we need to pray for a little more conversion, so that in the next situation we can truly say...
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