Fr Frank O’Loughlin delivered the homily at the Opening of the Parish Year Mass, which was celebrated on Sunday, 9 February 2025 at Our Holy Redeemer Church in Surrey Hills.
Luke 5:1-11
Jesus was standing one day by the lake of Gennesaret, with the crowd pressing round him listening to the word of God, when he caught sight of two boats close to the bank. The fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats – it was Simon’s – and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.’ ‘Master,’ Simon replied, ‘we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.’ And when they had done, this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear, so they signalled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; when these came, they filled the two boats to sinking point.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, ‘Leave me Lord; I am a sinful man.’ For he and all his companions were completely overcome by the catch they had made; so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners. But Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on it is men you will catch.’ Then, bringing their boats back to land, they left everything and followed him.
The first Christians had to face things they were not expecting.
Simon and James and John in today’s Gospel were fishermen. They were not Jewish priests or synagogue officials. They were going about their daily tasks as fishermen when Jesus interrupts what they were doing and takes them into a whole new way of life. Imagine that happening to us!
Why did he pick them? He did not pick Jewish intellectuals or heroes of people of importance in Israel. He picked those ordinary working people. There must have been something he saw in them. No one who is sensible picks for no reason.
By listening to him about catching fish – their own speciality – they are taken beyond their own capacities. They were able to catch fish in abundance but only because they listened to what he had to say!
This will be the case throughout their time with Jesus. Looking at the gospels, we can see that he had to keep taking them beyond themselves, beyond how they saw things. Constantly, they misunderstood him and let their own ideas and feelings get in the way of what he was doing and saying. For example, after Peter made his strong confession of faith in Jesus saying in response to the question “Who do you say I am?”, “You are the Christ”. But then when Jesus begins to say that he will die and then rise from the dead, Peter takes him aside and suggests that he should not be talking like that (Matthew 16.13-23). It takes Peter a long time to get what Jesus is on about.
So, it is so often with us, my friends. We must keep listening to him and letting him take us beyond where we may be. We here today have experienced a little of that being taken beyond ourselves in our recent parish life. As we open the parish year for 2025, we do so for the first time as the Parish of Our Lady of Pentecost comprising our five churches.
We began this morning’s liturgy by reading the passage from the Acts of the Apostles from which the new name of our parish is taken:
After Jesus had been taken up to heaven, they returned to Jerusalem…. And when they reached the city, they went to the upper room where they had been staying; there were Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alpheus and Simon the Zealot and Jude, the son of James. With one heart all these were constantly persevering in prayer, together with the women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. (Acts 1:12-14)
We are in a similar situation to them. The Lord they were used to being with is no longer physically among them, as he is no longer physically available to us.
They were facing a very new situation of which they did not know a great deal at all, and they had to work out their way ahead, step by step. There was no magic formula for them to follow or any rule book on how to be the Church. And St Luke continues to tell their story in the Acts of the Apostles and shows us all the ups and downs that were part of that early history – the good and the ill.
There are two significant things in the above small passage from the Acts of the Apostles:
1. They kept together – their unity mattered. And that is what our gathering together today is all about.
2. They prayed together. And Luke later tells us that they gathered together on the first day of the week (Sunday) for the breaking of the bread. And that precisely is what we are about to do on this first day of the week, as we do on each first day of the week.
And is it significant that the only person St Luke names explicitly apart from the apostles is Mary, the mother of Jesus. She whose listening to and acceptance of the word of God brought Christ into our world.
And so, like those earliest Christians, we keep calling the Spirit of God to be at work in us and we do this in the company of Mary the mother of Jesus.
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Sandy says:
What a terrific idea to print Fr Frank’s sermon!
Thank you.