4th Sunday after Pentecost 10.7.11 Transformed
There are two remarkable things that God does for us:
1) that He forgives our sins and 2) that He sends us out to help others to seek forgiveness for their sins.
Both would seem unlikely if we thought about them in advance.
Why should He forgive us so freely? He loves us enough to be able to do that. We should be very grateful.
Perhaps it is even more improbable that He would use us to forgive others. In today’s Gospel, when Peter acknowledges his sinfulness Our Lord does not contradict him but moves on to another matter when He says, I will make you fishers of men.
To be ‘fishers of men’: of course we cannot pull others in by our own authority. What we can do is bring Christ to others by the fact that He dwells in us.
This will work if we are humble enough. Humility is the key.
The moment we think we are ‘good’ in our own strength or by our own virtue, we crumble to nothing. But if we remember on an ongoing basis that it is only by God’s grace that we are still able to walk free... thus we are humbled, and then we can be channels of that same grace to others.
This is how the Church grew. A small band of people experienced the mercy of God which transformed them. Then, on fire with gratitude and maintaining humility this small band went out proclaiming the mercy of God and telling others what they had to do to receive the same thing.
Many believed them and they in turn became proclaimers of mercy and so the Church has spread and still does in our time.
What makes us any different from the people outside? We are not better than they are by any innate virtue. Our only claim to fame is that we have had enough sense to see our need of mercy and to receive it as offered.
We do not set ourselves up as better than the rest of the human race; only fortunate enough to have discovered the precious pearl of faith. And in our relief and joy at finding a way out of misery we want to tell others about it.
We throw out the line like the fishermen and hope to bring in some willing fish. (Real fish do not want to be caught; but the people who are ‘caught’ will be happy.)
We say that the apostles were transformed after Pentecost and it is often said that previously timid men were now courageous. It is true.
But their change from timid to courageous was made possible by a deeper transformation still: sinful to forgiven.
From that point on they were too happy to be worried about their own safety. Courage is self-forgetfulness. So is humility.
St Paul (also an apostle) thought he was the least of all, and many other saints have said the same. They were not just saying that as a polite formality. They really did think it because they could see so clearly their inadequacy in the light of Christ.
The greatest saints are the most humble people. Lesser people think they are more important, and so are less able to transmit the mercy of God. A strange paradox.
The truly humble are able to convey the reality of God to others: by the holiness of their lives, and by the fact that God can work through them.
May we be such people. There is so much need in these times. The harvest is rich. Can we be the labourers to bring them in?
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