February 11, 2025
Jesus Brings a Big Surprise in the Lives of Simple Fishermen.
What is he brining into our lives? Here’s a short reflection:
TGIF is not only a restaurant. It’s a motto for many of us today: “Thank God It’s Friday.” This says a lot about how we view our daily lives. Often it feels like we are just enduring life. We have our routine, the alarm rings, we get our usual breakfast, then commuting, then work, then commuting again, until we finally return home pretty exhausted. Sometimes our work is exciting; but more often it is just tedious boredom.
So what would it be like to be a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee two thousand one hundred years ago? Imagine the routine in this work: waking early, checking the nets, waiting for the crew to arrive, going out in the boat, and guessing where the fish might be today, the hours spent until the school of fish is found, hauling them ashore and seeing how many fish can actually be sold. Because that’s what our families and relatives depend on.
Simon and Andrew find, in the Gospel we have today, that life can be much more exciting than this. They complain that they have worked all night but have caught nothing. But they will humor Jesus a bit. All of a sudden, their nets are close to breaking with the biggest haul of fish of their entire lives. Their daily life, with its monotony, had the seeds of a future they could not have imagined.
Some of this is happening in the first reading. How many times did Isaiah go to the temple, sing the psalms, smell the incense? It was probably routine for him. But this day he sees something fuller and deeper in what he has been doing his whole life. He comes to realize that his worship has been an encounter with the God of heaven, the God of angels.
Our ordinary lives, in relationship to God, are hardly ordinary. Any moment can be a breakthrough moment of encounter. Paul shows us this in our second reading: even he had an experience of the risen Christ when it was the last thing he deserved. God’s grace surrounds every moment that we have, whether we realize it or not.
We come to Mass; often it feels like routine, maybe like it felt so often for Isaiah. But the process of our Mass is one huge opportunity to encounter God once again. The readings today invite us to at least be open to this. Perhaps we have only a few major breakthrough encounters with God in our spiritual lives, but these encounters have the potential to transform our entire lives. We are invited to be open, to be waiting, to let the God of infinite love touch us.
Certainly, there are many callings in the Church, many ways to try to follow Jesus. But none of those callings is insignificant. From within our daily lives, our daily patterns and responsibilities, the hand of God is waiting to touch us, to show us the purpose of our lives.
We don’t live saying “Thank God It’s Friday.” We live saying: We thank God for every moment because it is an invitation to live and love more fully.