Today's scripture readings are about conversion and how conversion leads to mission. Our reading from Isaiah, which should resonate with the Gloria, envisions the prophet's lips being cleansed when an angel of God presses a hot coal on them. In our passage from Saint Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, the apostle discusses his persecution of the Christians before his encounter with the Risen Christ. This encounter did not just alter the trajectory of his life, it caused him to do a one hundred and eighty degree turn around. Finally, in our Gospel, Peter is called despite his feeling of unworthiness.
From a Christian view, if Christ did not call sinners, he couldn't call anyone. As it is, in baptism, he called you. In baptism, you died, were buried, and rose with Christ to new life. Baptism shows us that eternal life is not the life that starts after mortal death, eternal life is now. While your call, your vocation, might be different from that of Isaiah, Paul, or Peter, you aren't any less called.
What are you called to do? You are called to proclaim the Good News, to spread the Gospel, to tell others about what Jesus has done for you. Given the times the Church is passing through, this might strike you as hopelessly naïve. I can live with naïve but I can't accept hopelessness. All of what the Church is experiencing is the result of sin.
We know, for example, from our reading of the Gospels, that Peter didn't become perfect the day he accepted Christ's call to leave everything and follow. I very much doubt that Paul was perfect from the day he encountered the resurrected Lord on the road to Damascus. Conversion to the fullness of Christ is a process that unfolds through experience over time. The process of conversion is a lifelong project. In the end, it is the only that project that matters.
If the Gospel is not good news for sinners, then it is not good news. But it also isn't the case that we experience God's grace by the forgiveness of our sins and we simply carry on as before. Like Paul's one-eighty, we too must turn around and follow Christ. To experience conversion, to be converted, is not only to see the need but to have a deep desire to change. The level at which Christ appeals to us dictates that conversion is not something that can be imposed upon you.
Conversion is a movement of your heart. While he issued him an invitation of sorts there on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Gennesaret is another name for the same body of water), Jesus did not demand that Peter follow him. The determination to leave everything and follow Jesus was one he had to make himself. Peter's choice at that moment was not between good and evil. Maybe it was between good and better, but that depends very much on how you define "better."
Frankly, we should be a little scandalized by the radicality of Peter's decision. We know Peter was married... A decision to remain a fisherman providing for his family is hardly a blameworthy one. By contrast, we know that Paul was not married.
As both Peter and Paul experienced, Jesus leads you to the cross. In Peter's case, according to tradition, quite literally. Paul was merely beheaded, as befitted a Roman citizen. But without a doubt, both of these men, perhaps in their hopeful naïvete, believed Jesus Christ was leading them beyond the cross. The only way beyond the cross is through the cross.
Further on in the same chapter as our reading from 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul, perhaps with reference to the prophet Hosea, writing about Christ's resurrection,
Death is swallowed up in victory.This, dear friends, is good news indeed!
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Cor 15:54-55)
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