"Depart from me": the Father comes ever closer to us in His Son

Dominica IV post Pentecosten

Luke 5:1-11

Today, Father's Day, we encounter in our Gospel God the Father – also in the 16 new priests ordained yesterday for the Archdiocese, along with thousands more during this season around the world.

We encounter the holiness of the Father in His Son as recounted by the Gospel today.

What is our response?

Is it like that of Peter? “Depart from me.”

God does the opposite: He comes ever closer.

In Jesus Christ we see the Father – the Holiness of the Father in the Son

In the priesthood of Jesus Christ, ordained men, Peter, the Apostles, their successors and all men who are priests, bring Him so close to us as to be our Food.

The Holy Eucharist is the Father’s response to our fear in which we might be moved to cry out in self loathing, “depart from me”.

What happens to you and me when we discover we are so very different and far from God?

He excites love in us where there was once even perhaps dread – dread to come into His presence knowing as we do so well our sinful nature.

But in Christ, who gives us the Father, we have a wonderful mystery and reality of the Father’s love.

Grace, both in mercy to forgive us and in the Eucharist to enable us to grow more and more supernaturally to His image and likeness.

The same holiness which in Christ caused Peter, the first pope, to seek escape is our antidote to distance from God which we discover in our repentance for and repugnance of sin. He makes us like Himself, so that we no longer seek escape. We seek Him. We can love in ourselves that which is of Him while growing more distant from the past, that in ourselves which once caused dread and loathing.

But for this to happen something is required of us. Peter's change of attitude was evident in his life.

"And Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid; henceforth you shall catch men'. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left all and followed Him."