Unworthy and empowered

The reflection we might be encouraged to take as a result of the texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today is to consider the moments when we have been overwhelmed by a sense of the Presence of God. It may have been during worship as Friar Jude Winkler tells of the passage from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. It may have been in one those times in our life when the great mysteries of birth, death and truly intimate love flood our experience. It may have been as Paul relates to the Corinthians, when the Presence tears us “as one untimely born” from a womb of comfort and blindness to the blinding light of revelation. Friar Jude identifies two of our responses to the Presence. We are powerfully attracted, like Isaiah, Moses, Peter and Paul. We fear our unworthiness and know our sinful state in relation to Good. FatherLarry Gillick SJ uses the recent experience of the Super Bowl advertising to remind us the advertising techniques to find or create a deep need which, of course, can only be satisfied by their product. The deep need of our being is known by God. Father Larry considers how Peter in the passage from the Gospel of Luke is faced with both his lack of success in the work of being a fisherman and the use of that sense of inadequacy and incompetence by God to be the basis for the mission which draws Peter more toward the Holy One. The great persecutor of the Way reveals to the Corinthians his encounter with the resurrected Christ, Who will reshape the zeal and energy of the Pharisee to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. Our unworthiness and the inadequacy of the efforts through which we encounter disappointment, working according to our plan, are transformed to bring in a real harvest in His vineyard working according to the Will of the Father.