Scripture Readings
Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 6:1-8
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was an American poet who lived much of her life in New England and the environs of Cape Cod. Some considered her to be a mystic because of how much of her poetry was about creation and its beauty. She was often brought to a sense of awe and wonder, and she would write of how God’s spirit saturated all that is.
Though she taught in universities and lectured across the country, she was once chided for spending so much time lost among the forests and along the seashores. It was a luxury, thought her critic, that few could afford to waste time upon.
Some thought that her rebuttal was a poem entitled “The Summer Day,” which concludes with perhaps her most often quoted line, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
If we are fortunate in life, we will find what grabs our heart’s desire, and so then allow it to become a passion for what we are about. Or perhaps more accurately, it will find us and move us to follow it. Sadly, some do not follow what they stumble upon, finding and preferring other paths.
It has been noted that life is what happens to us as we’re busy doing other things. It would seem, however, that God is also what happens as we are busy doing other things. Such moments may even be life changing for that is where we find God – in life.
There can be many such moments. One morning, a person gets up and before they go to bed that night, they discover they have fallen in love, and life is no longer the same. Or they’ve been unexpectedly offered the job they’ve always wanted, and they’ve been given new energy. Or they find themselves expecting a child they have eagerly awaited, and life has taken on new meaning. Or like Simon Peter and his brother Andrew and their friends in this week’s Gospel, they go out to fish at Jesus’ request even though they’ve been at it all night long and caught nothing, and they catch such a great number of fish that their nets begin to tear, and they are amazed.
So startling are such moments, so unexpected, that they can seem charged with the presence of God to those who experience them. We may very well stand in awe before such moments, realizing that life is changed, never to be lived or understood thereafter in the same way as yesterday.
Such moments may even touch us so deeply that we may begin to have faith in a radically new way – perhaps for the first time, simply because we’ve begun to recognize the action of God in our lives.
Though Luke’s gospel story this weekend is often referred to as the call of the apostles, if only because they then left all and followed Jesus, there is no actual call to come and follow: “For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him. Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid, from now on, you will be catching men.’ (Then) they left everything and followed him.
Their following, it would seem, was simply a response to that profound experience which they could only see as being of God. It is all too often how many of us come to faith, through some experience that touches us so deeply that it changes our lives and how we live them.
The onset of faith, then, may be more like an insight from an emotional experience, more so than the conclusion of reasoned thinking. It is why we usually cannot argue someone into believing or into the kind of faith by which one surrenders to God and God’s way.
There is a difference between believing and having faith. Belief is about the existence of God, and there are many who believe in God. Faith, however, is trusting in that God, allowing that God to shape the way we live and love. We leave our former way and embrace a new way. We see, then, with the eyes of faith.
Following the path of faith with our one wild and precious life, then, seems to bring us to lives lived with meaning and love and the kind of peace we ultimately seek. It happens because of the profound experiences that touch us with moments charged with God’s presence.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Have you experienced moments that brought you to new and deeper faith?
Does the difference between believing and having faith ring true to you?
