If Not You, Who Then?

by Fr. Jeff Wilson  |  02/09/2025  |  From the Clergy

Many of our youth and young adults, as they attend the Sunday Mass regularly, eventually may ask if God may be calling them to the priesthood or religious life. For boys and young men who have served at the altar, in particular, look to their priests as potential role models in serving the Church. Girls and young women too look to serving Holy Mother Church in religious life as sisters, nuns, and brides of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As they (we) get older into adulthood we become more aware of our shortcomings, and see ourselves as unworthy of consecrated life, due to sin. Such are the sentiments in today’s readings. The prophet Isaiah experiences the immense holiness of the Lord, awed by the angels’ reverence with cries of praises. But due to his uncleanliness, all he could think of is his doom for he has seen the Lord who is ‘justice’. St. Paul too calls himself the least of one to be called, ‘unfit’ due to his persecutions of Christ’s disciples.  Not to mention Simon Peter also, who begs Christ to leave him, for his is a ‘sinner’. But with the Lord’s justice is mercy.  From the altar, the angel takes a burning charcoal to purify his lips from wickedness. When asked, who shall the Lord send? The prophet’s answered, “Here I am, send me.”

It is by His pure and unmerited grace that we are sanctified, made holy. With the gift of faith, we worship the Lord with praise and thanksgiving, for Jesus says to our youth, “Put out into the Deep and lower your nets…Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”  And it is not only our youth who are called.  Every man, woman and child, young and old, are called to put out into the deep; trusting in the Lord as witnesses to the call of salvation, the ‘Hound of Heaven’. Let your loving service, for your fellow man, be the ‘bait’ the catches souls for Christ. It is no wonder the command for love of neighbor would bring about the renewal for the face of the earth, the Glory of God.

-Fr. Jeff Wilson