Our Unworthiness – His Call

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author. 

“Then I said, Woe to me. I am doomed, for I am a man of unclean lips. Living among a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah has just had an experience which makes him feel that he’s about to be destroyed, and why? He says, Why? Because he’s a sinner, and all the people that he’s living with are sinners. And so he’s sensing the corruption of sin that we know that we battle with every day, that’s everywhere, that seems to have corrupted everything, even things that should be holy. It seems like sin has profaned everything, and we often get cynical because of this corruption of sin. And Isaiah was experiencing it with the people of Israel, way, way back then. And the Gospel shows us many examples, especially what should have been the holiest, the priest of the temple, the doctors of the law, the Pharisees. And especially there, the sin had penetrated. And sadly, we know even in the history of the Church, there’s so much sin, and still today, and we’re having terrible examples today of sin corrupting the highest positions in the Church, and maybe especially the highest position. And so this terrible like contamination of everything by sin is our daily battle, and it weighs us down so much. And so we’re going to see today with Isaiah, and then also in different ways, with Peter and Paul, they’re all different experiences. But each one of them, we’re going to see three stages. And so this experience that we have of Isaiah is the turning point of his life, where it seemed like this is where his vocation, that it guides the whole rest of his life. And so he says, In the year the King Uzziah died. And so then he’s setting it. And then he expresses what he experienced. He says, “I saw the Lord.” So he has this great vision of God. And he says, “sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.” And St Thomas Aquinas has reflected on – we don’t have time to go into all of that – but on the significance of each one of these points. “Sitting on a throne high and exalted, lifted up and His train,” that the train of His garment, “filled the temple. And above Him stood the seraphim.” That’s some of the most, some of the most exalted of the angelic spirits. These are burning spirits, burning with charity. “Each had six wings. With two, he covered his face. With two, he covered his feet, and with two, he flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Armies, the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.” And that triple Holy, Holy, Holy is a way of expressing that the most holy, that the maximum holiness, and this, of course, is the origin of the Sanctus that we sing at every Mass. “And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of Him who called.” So this mighty voice, which is even shaking the foundations of where they are. “And the house was filled with smoke.” And so this manifestation of God that Isaiah is having and so this is an encounter with God and an encounter with the holiness of God. It’s very clear, holy, holy, holy. That’s the first thing they say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord. And Isaiah has often been called the Prophet of the holiness of God.  And oftentimes God speaks of Himself as the Holy One of Israel, especially to Isaiah. And holiness meant that something that had been consecrated and set apart, was separated from what was profane. And so this world of ours, as I said, which has been so contaminated, and then this holiness is apart from that contamination. And so Isaiah is filled, as we saw, with fear, a fear of the Lord, a good and holy fear of the Lord. That’s one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the fear of the Lord. It’s not a fear that comes from encountering evil like the pagan gods or the demonic spirits, but it’s a fear that comes from encountering so much good, infinite good, infinite majesty, with its truth, its beauty, its love, with its no evil, no lies, no ugliness, no selfishness, so much good, which is so powerful that completely transcends our experience. And so this causes reverence and awe, holy fear, reverence and awe. And that’s something that is almost what is so lost today, a sense of reverence and awe and adoration in the presence of the sacred mysteries, in the presence of God, God who is God. And as the Lord said to St Catherine of Siena, “I’m God and you’re not,” and God is God. And you know we’re in a society where you know so much, for instance, so much of the humor in our media and so forth, is like to destroy. It’s like this profanation of everything, to destroy the sense, any sense of reverence or for anything. And Isaiah’s experience is something that’s completely beyond this profane world. And you know, when we pray the Our Father, “Hallowed be thy name”, may your name be recognized in its holiness and its sanctity. And so in our world, where it’s holding what’s supposed to be holy, also often seems hypocritical in our world, because sadly there’s been a lot of examples, as we mentioned, of what should be holy, being profaned and hypocrisy. But here Isaiah, and Isaiah had experienced that. He knew that there the priests serving in the temple weren’t all holy. He knew the corruption that there was already in his time. He denounces it. But here Isaiah is experiencing the One in whom none of that corruption can penetrate, who is completely beyond any of this profanation any of this sin. There is a gulf between him and sin and this one who is completely triumphant in His power and His Holiness. And so this is the experience which changes Isaiah’s life and will inspire the rest of his prophetic ministry. And we have a different type of example in St Peter in the Gospel today. It says that this is where Jesus has been teaching from, Peter’s boat. And then he says, “put out and sat down your nets. And Peter says, Lord, we’ve been doing this all night. We haven’t got anything.” And he could have added, you know, you’re very impressive, but you’re a carpenter and I’m a fisherman. I know a little bit about this, but he does it. Peter obeys what the Lord said. And then it says – so this is not Isaiah’s, experience of the vision of God’s holiness – but it says, what impacts Peter, it says, is “astonishment at the catch of fish they made had seized him.” So it’s a miraculous fishing expedition – that’s so powerful for Peter. And so it’s a very different type of experience, but maybe even so that Peter, this experience in his boat, in the lake that he knew so well, doing what he knows so well, and had been unsuccessful, to have such a catch of fish, made him experience the presence of God. That like shocked him about this sensing the presence of God so close to him through this, through this miraculous catch of fish. And Paul, in the reading we had today from St Paul is also talking about, references his experience of encountering God and His Holiness. We just had a few days ago, the Feast of the conversion of St Paul. St Paul has also this experience of God and His Holiness. And so all three of these, Isaiah, Peter and Paul, all have an experience of God in different ways, but experience of God’s presence and of God’s holiness. And so again, think of that. Think of in our society, in our media, how often is there any sense of holiness, and how often is holiness ridiculed? These are powerful experiences. And so that’s the first point. And so the second point is, what? What effect does that have on these three?  So here’s what Isaiah says, and that’s what we read at the beginning. Isaiah says, “Woe to me. I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” That is, he senses that God’s holiness is so overwhelming that his sinful humanity cannot stand it, and it’s about to be destroyed. And so that’s striking is that this experience of and he says, again, very clearly, it’s God’s holiness which is so overwhelming. So it makes him feel his own unworthiness, his own sinfulness. And Peter, what is Peter doing at this miraculous catch a fish. Peter doesn’t say, “Wow, this is great. A miraculous catch of fish. And you know, you’re so impressive,” or something. What Peter says is he falls down at Jesus’ knees and says – and it’s striking what he says – He says, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. Depart from me.” This makes him feel so powerfully the divinity of Jesus, that he says, depart from me. He feels so unworthy and incapable of the holiness that’s right there in his boat, depart from me. And St Paul also, in a different way, recognizes his sinfulness. St Paul, in the reading we had today, he says, “I am the least of the apostles. I’m not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.” St Paul thought he was serving God. He thought what he was doing was holy, defending the sacred traditions as he was persecuting these heretics who called themselves Christians, who were worshiping this Jesus. And St Paul, in his pride and his arrogance, which was making him cruel, he thought he was serving God, and now he suddenly realizes, this experience of Jesus makes him realize how sinful he was. And so each one of these experience their own sinfulness, their unworthiness. Their experience of God makes them feel their unworthiness. This experience in God’s holiness also reveals our own unworthiness. It’s like, I’ve used that example that, like, if you enter into a cabin at night, you can’t like, you can’t really tell, for instance, if the windows are dirty or clean, but in the morning, when the sun starts coming in, you can see if the windows have a lot of dirt on them. And so this light of God penetrating into their lives suddenly makes, also illuminates, what’s sinful in their lives, and that’s very painful for them. It’s even frightening for them, but it’s also a grace, a grace of truth, which leads them to humility. For each one of these, for Isaiah, for sensing that I am doomed. For Peter saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” And St Paul, Saul, Saul of Tarsus, who needed more than all the others, needed that humility to realize that he was completely mistaken. And so they need this truth which causes humility, that opens them up for God’s mercy. Pope John Paul, St John Paul, citing Pope Pius the 12th talked about the loss of the sense of sin in our world today, the loss of the sense of sin. And the reason that’s so dangerous is because without the sense of sin, without the humility that that brings, we don’t turn to God for mercy. And so the devil has this tactic with kind of like two, methods. One is he helps. He tries to make us ignore our own sinfulness. And then, when a person starts to become aware of their sinfulness, he switches it to an opposite path of getting them to focus exclusively, excessively on our sinfulness. So either to not recognize our sinfulness or to focus too much on our sinfulness, and neither of those is healthy. And I’ve used this example of a person, say, in front of them, they have, on one side they have a mirror, and on the other side is Jesus. And satan is always trying to get us to look into the mirror, to spend our time looking in the mirror, either out of vanity or out of mirror. I mean mirror often in the sense of a like the mirror, in a mind that is looking at ourselves, considering ourselves or looking it can be out of vanity, or it can be out of the sense of, look how bad I am. Look how terrible I am.  But both of those are distracting us from looking at Jesus. And that’s when some people need to make a very detailed examination of conscience, because they’re not very aware of their sinfulness. Some people are hyper aware of their sinfulness and that can become a problem too, can fall into scruples. And both those cases, what we need to do is not be looking at ourselves but looking at Jesus. And that’s what all these experiences are; God wanting to draw us to Him, to look at Him, because when we look at Jesus, He reveals the truth. Jesus is the truth. So more than a mirror, that is more than our own consideration of ourselves, Jesus reveals the truth, and that includes the truth of His love for us. So His truth also reveals to us our own sinfulness, but He shows us our sinfulness in His love. So that kind of like, like the example of the sun shining through the window, that it makes us, we become aware of light, and we also become aware of the stains on the window, the dirt on the window, which is keeping some of that light from getting to us. And so it’s kind of in that sense that we become aware of our sins because we become aware of the light, and we become aware of the things which are still obstacles to that light. But that helps us, that can inspire us to turn to Him for His mercy, to remove those obstacles, to be freed of those sins. And so Jesus makes us aware of our sins but makes us aware of the much greater reality of His love for us. And I say that because people often say, I feel so unworthy, and that’s good. It’s good to feel unworthy. The bad thing would be to feel worthy. Oh, I feel so worthy of God’s graces and His love. And well, that can be more a problem, but feeling so unworthy is good. But we don’t want to stop there. It’s a necessary condition for us to be open to His grace. And so this unworthiness, this awareness of our unworthiness, should not paralyze us, but should mobilize us. And so that leads us to the third point, After Isaiah says, “Woe to me. I am doomed. I’m a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips, and I’ve seen the Lord.” And then it says, “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar in heaven. And he touched my mouth and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away and your sin forgiven’.” So the Lord didn’t say to Isaiah, no, you’re not a sinful man, and your lips aren’t sinful, and you’re not living among people who are sinful. He didn’t say that. That was the truth. He was a sinful man, and he was living among sinful people. But He does say, because of this mysterious action from the seraphim, your guilt is taken away, your sin forgiven. And we have this grace of forgiveness through the Sacrament of Baptism and then through the Sacrament of Reconciliation and penance, which I hope soon to be able to continue offering here. And so Isaiah then recognizes his sinfulness, and then God gives him a grace of forgiveness and purification. And then what happens? That’s not the end. And then it says, “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us’.” So he’s hearing a call, and one of the things this call means is that God respects our freedom to respond or not to respond. But he’s hearing a call, and then Isaiah responds. “Here I am, send me.” And so his unworthiness, God doesn’t just say, Well, yeah, you’re unworthy, so I’m gonna forgive you, but now I have to find somebody else who’s worthy. But God not only forgives him, but gives him the grace and purification, sanctification to be able to be His messenger. And with Peter, we see something similar. Peter says, “Depart from me, Lord, I’m a sinful man.” And Jesus doesn’t say, No, you’re not a sinful man. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re great, you’re awesome, just the way you are. You know, you’re just the way you are. Don’t change at all. Peter. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say you’re not a sinner, but He says, – and he will show him in his apostolic formation – but he says, “Do not be afraid. Henceforth, you will be catching men.” And so also to Peter, once Peter becomes aware of his sinfulness, that’s when the Lord can give him – so it’s funny, it’s not when Peter might have felt himself worthy, it’s when he feels himself unworthy, when he recognizes his unworthiness, that’s what opens him to becoming an instrument of God. And St Paul also had to recognize his own unworthiness. And then he says, “By the grace of God, I am what he am.. By the grace of God that it’s he realized that he was a sinner, but it was God’s grace that was acting in him. And so these three points, with each one of them, we’ve seen an experience of God’s holiness, which causes a reverential fear of the Lord and an awareness of their unworthiness. But that unworthiness doesn’t paralyze them or destroy them, it opens them up to God’s grace and God’s mercy. And then each one of them receives a mission from God. And so, to conclude, in this Mass, I wish we could have an experience like Isaiah had of God’s holiness. But in the Scripture, Isaiah is sharing with us his experience. So the Scripture, the Scripture, the word of the Lord that we listen to in every Mass manifest to us God’s holiness. And in just a few moments, we also will sing Santus, Santus, Santus, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts. And we will kneel down, And at Mass we say, from the very beginning, we say, Lord, we say, “I confess that I’m a sinner.” And right before Holy Communion, we know again we say, “Lord, I am not worthy.” I am not worthy. So every Mass it’s reminding us of the holiness of God and our unworthiness. But Isaiah had this ember from the altar in heaven that the seraphim brings down to touch his lips. What would that be like? What would that be like to have a Seraphim taking an ember from the altar of heaven and coming down to touch your lips? But we actually have something greater than that. In every Mass, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord, not just touching our lips, but entering into us, to strengthen us. After we’ve been baptized, after we’ve been reconciled with the Lord to now bring us, give us His grace for our mission, and so that we who are unworthy sinners, but by God’s grace He calls us. And so today, with Isaiah, with Peter, with St Paul, and especially with our Blessed Mother, we can respond to the Lord’s call to each one of us in these critical times that we’re living, this great battle of reconquest, the Lord is calling each one of us and each one of us, you in the privacy of your heart in this Mass, can respond to the Lord – “Here I am, Lord, send me.” Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Isaiah 6:1-2, 3
Luke 5:1-11
I Corinthians 15:3-8, 11