5th Ordinary Sunday, Year C, 10.02.2013

Isaiah 6:1-2, 3-8/ 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 or 15: 3-8, 11/Luke 5:1-11

So, today is the first day of the Lunar New Year (or Chinese New Year).

With the first day of the CNY falling on a Sunday, it means that Monday as well as Tuesday is a holiday.
And that means that there are two days for us to go visiting relatives and friends.

And it’s a time for feasting and collecting “ang pows” and dressing up and catching up with each other.
Yet there are also people who would take the opportunity of the CNY holidays to go overseas or just get out of the country.

The reason is that they find CNY quite boring with shops being closed and everywhere else is crowded.

But another reason is that they want to avoid relatives and friends asking them all those personal and sensitive questions.

Questions like “When are you getting married?” or “When are you going to have baby?” (usually asked by the aunties)

Yes, these are really personal and sensitive questions and more often than not we don’t want to answer them.

Besides questions about marriage and having babies, which are rather personal questions, there are also other questions which sound more social and professional.

And the questions are: Which company are you with? What is your profession? (What are you working as?)

So, year in, year out, at social gatherings, and also throughout the year, we are faced with those questions.

Hence, whether it is looking for spouse, or having children, or being in which company, or climbing up which corporate ladder, we know what it points to.

Yes, it points to hard work and more hard work; then we will have something to show others and something to talk about.

And it may also mean that it’s our turn to ask others those personal and sensitive questions.

But the reality of life is that hard work does not necessarily bear corresponding gains.

In the gospel, we heard of one such case. Peter the fisherman, had worked hard all night and he caught nothing.

Certainly, he wasn’t in a good mood. While others are comparing their catch, he had nothing to show. He had zero to show.

So, we can imagine how Peter felt when Jesus asked him to put out to deep water for a catch.

Because it was so absurd. It was the wrong time for fishing and also it was coming from someone who knows nothing about fishing.

Certainly Peter wasn’t in a mood for absurdities. Peter could have just told Jesus to “go and get lost!”. And being the impulsive person that he was, he could have said that.

But the strange thing was that as much as he tried to explain the situation to Jesus, in the end he relented and did what Jesus told him to do.

So into the depths he went, and out of the depths came an absurdity that brought him to his knees.

I mean, just where did all that fish came from, and it was so much that it filled two boats to sinking point!

But it seems that God would resort to such absurdities to make us realize who He is and who we are.

So it took two boats full of fish to make Peter the fisherman realize he was a poor fisherman, and a sinful man.

Yes, God has to make absurd things happen in order to tell us something, and it is still happening.

We may have heard of Bernadette Soubirous, a 14 year-old peasant girl, who lived in Lourdes, France.

Our Lady appeared to her at a grotto on the 11 Feb 1858 and after several apparitions, Our Lady asked her to dig a hole in the ground and drink the water there.

Any 14 year-old would have enough of common sense to think of this as absurd and a rather crazy thing to do.

Yet, with people watching her, Bernadette went on her knees and dug the ground with her bare hands.

And when the muddy water began to gather in the hole that she had dug, she scooped the water to drink.

Obviously, the people thought that what she did was absurd and  that she had gone mad.

And indeed, she was a messy and muddy sight and looking quite like a lunatic.

What Bernadette did was absurd and crazy. But from where she dug, the waters became increasingly clean and welled up into a spring.

And now, millions of pilgrims go to the Marian shrine at Lourdes to bathe in the healing waters and even drink the water.

So from what seemed to be an absurd act by Bernadette, God manifested His healing grace and the forgiveness of sins through the waters of the spring at Lourdes.

Yes, God can be called the “God of absurdities” and He would resort to absurdities to make us realize He is the God of Holiness and that His “absurdities” are much greater than our intelligence and our capabilities.

But all that is to make us realize that He is holy, and that like Peter and Bernadette, we can only kneel down in humility.

God may not call us to do absurd things like going fishing in the middle of the ocean at midday or to drink muddy water from the ground.

But He is calling us to do simple things with love and humility.

Simple things like offering peace and forgiveness and reconciliation as we meet up with relatives and friends during the festive holidays.

Simple things like being patient and tolerant when others probe into our lives with those sensitive and personal questions.

Simple things like attending to the absurd and ridiculous demands of the some people.

By doing simple things with love and humility, others will see the holiness of our God.

That may sound rather absurd, but let us remember, that with God, absurdities can become realities.