Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time/C
Massimo Palombella
In today’s Gospel (Lk 5,1-11) Jesus, by the lake of Gennesaret, calls Simon and his two partners, James and John, sons of Zebedee. It is interesting to note that when the Lord enters our lives in an authentic, true way, there is no “violence”, no radical change in our identity, but basically a boundless broadening of our horizons. In fact, Simon was a fisherman and, after the encounter with Jesus, he remains a fisherman, but with a radically changed horizon: from fish he will have to fish for men. To truly encounter the Lord, to make space in our lives for Him, means slowly understanding our “ability to be”, which is often far from what we have given ourselves permission to be, or from the horizons that an education, a specific culture have implicitly communicated to us. And it is precisely in expanding our horizons that we encounter reality, live in reality, become the people we can and should be, and taste what “life in abundance” means. Like Simon, we can run the risk of consuming our existence in the limited horizon of a lake, or we can accept to “follow” the Lord, that is, to set out, to move, to “leave”, to make those necessary “separations”. We do not know where this journey will lead us, not even what we will have to face, just as Simon did not know when he went from being a poor fisherman to being Peter.
The introit of today’s Celebration is taken from Psalm 94 (Ps 94, 6. 7. 1) with the following text:
Venite, adoremus Deum et procidamus ante Dominum
ploremus ante eum, qui fecit nos
quia ipse est Dominus Deus noster.
(Come, let us worship God and bow down before the Lord;
let us shed tears before the Lord who made us,
for he is the Lord our God).
The attached music, in Gregorian Chant, is taken from the Graduale Triplex published in Solesmes in 1979. The music track can be found on YouTube where there are no indications of interpretation. A blessed Sunday and heartfelt greetings.
