A Prudent Response
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Because I know one of the reporters on WGN News personally and have friended her on Facebook, I regularly receive videos of the stories on which she reports. This past Friday I received a video of a man walking on the frozen water of Lake Michigan. He was an international student and didn’t realize at first that he had ventured out on to the dangerous, icy waters. When he heard a police siren, he started to make his way back to shore. He had wandered about 1,000 feet from shore. He was rescued by the Chicago Fire and Police Departments. During that rescue, one of the first responders actually broke through the ice as they neared the shore line. The young man claims that he didn’t know that he was walking on ice. However, if he did know what he was doing, we would all agree that he was not being prudent. As my friend reported, at the very least, his foolish actions were using valuable resources of the city that might have been needed elsewhere.
Prudence stands as the first of the four “cardinal” human virtues. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the preeminent status of prudence as the ‘guide’ or “charioteer of the virtues.” One way to describe this virtue is to say that it judges what is reasonable. It is the role of prudence to ensure “right reason in action,” by seeing to it that the other virtues (i.e., justice, fortitude, and temperance) are exercised in a “sane” and “sober” manner. The Catechism is clear that prudence should govern the other virtues.
Before you think that I have strayed away from the Scriptures for this morning’s liturgy, I simply ask the question. Were Isaiah, Paul, Peter and his brother and fellow fishermen being reasonable in their actions when they accepted the call that each of them received from God? Should they not have taken a little bit of time to think things through before simply accepting the roles to which they were called?
Catholic parishes throughout the United States are celebrating the Church’s annual Day for Consecrated Life this weekend. Every year on the weekend closest to February 2nd, the Church asks the faithful to pray for those who have answered the call to religious life and to pray that the Lord would bless us with more vocations to religious life. Each of the sisters here and I have a “vocation story.” We can trace in some detail how we came to the decision to enter religious life and eventually make a lifelong commitment to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I can assure you that none of us acted as precipitously as Isaiah, Paul, and the apostles from today’s Gospel passage. In fact, the Church would not allow us to act this way. Each of us was required to go through several years of questioning and formation before we would be allowed to ask the Church to accept our vows.
The defining issue of the call of Isaiah and of Paul and of the apostles is the fact that they realized that they were in the presence of something much larger than they were, much holier than they were. They responded to that realization by offering themselves as servants of the Most High. So it can be argued that their responses were reasonable or prudent. Each of them expressed the fact that they thought themselves unworthy of this call. Isaiah had to experience an angel holding a hot coal to his lips, Paul was knocked to the ground on his way to Damascus, and Peter is so terrified of what he has witnessed in Jesus that he asks Jesus to depart from him because he is a sinful man. To state the obvious, none of us is worthy to act for God. Yet, God calls us to do so. Isaiah preaches repentance to the children of Israel. Paul preaches the Gospel to the Gentiles. The apostles are sent by Jesus to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Each of them realized that God was acting through them, that they could take no credit for what was happening through them.
This is what the Scriptures ask of all of us today, both those who are consecrated to religious life as well as those who are living as married or single Catholic Christians. Our baptismal promises show us the way. We are to reject sin, any evil and the works of the evil one. We are to express our faith in the God who created us, in Jesus who has saved us, and in the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us. There is nothing complicated about it. We are simply to live as people of faith who live virtuous lives. Simple, yes; easy, no. It is difficult because it calls for each of us to set out into deep waters and to let God take over the control of our lives. We all know that giving up control is one of the hardest things any human being can do.
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