Fr. Michael Williams

One of the Chaplains at the Royal recently told me that he was called out to a dying woman in Resus, and one of the last things she had said to her son was, ‘Can you see the light…it’s all true’; then she died.

From today’s readings we see both Isaiah and Peter also in awe at their personal encounter with the presence of God; and they are also made aware of their own sinfulness in the light of God’s glory.

The Prophet Isaiah’s vision of God was truly awe inspiring. Isaiah ‘saw the Lord seated on a high throne’, and the angels in His presence crying out, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts’. We say those words at Mass just before the Consecration, when the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ by the Holy Spirit. At the Consecration at Mass, when the priest lifts the Sacred Host and the Sacred Chalice, we truly come into the Presence of God; we can say that the Divine touches the earth- touches us- at this point. At the Consecration we come into the presence of God, even more in fact because we then receive Him in a Holy Communion.

In the presence of the infinite God, Isaiah sees himself in his littleness and sinfulness: ‘What a wretched state I am in! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips’. God’s astounding grandeur is too much for Isaiah to take. And in the gospel, Peter the fishermen, was also overcome by the awesome Presence of God. When Christ initiates the miraculous catch of fish, Peter’s response is to fall to his knees saying, ‘Leave me Lord; I am a sinful man’.

At the beginning of Mass one of the first things we do is to acknowledge our sinfulness with the Confiteor, the ‘I Confess’. Many people today refuse to acknowledge that they are sinners in need of God’s forgiveness; they are not facing up to the reality that we have drifted away from God, and we need His grace to cleanse us. When people don’t admit to this they are not living in the real world because they then deny God; they are in denial like an alcoholic saying they don’t have a drink problem! We must pray earnestly for those who deny God and who deny their own sinfulness.

From the Scriptures we know the Lord does not abandon Isaiah or Peter or us in our sinfulness. The Lord sends an angel to strengthen Isaiah and his ‘sin is taken away’. And God does not abandon Peter in his failings, but tries to reassure him by saying, ‘Do not be afraid’. For us the Lord sends the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession) for this purpose, and He gives us the Mass to encounter Him mysteriously each week.

The vision of God that Isaiah experienced, and Peter’s encounter with Christ, were to shape their whole lives. Isaiah and Peter both brought God’s message to the people of their day, who often did not want to hear it. But they both remained steadfast amidst persecution.

We too have experienced God’s grace and power in this life. Let’s be strengthened by Him so that we can do the work He has given us to do on earth, and so then be able to see Him face to face in Heaven, like that woman did in the Resus suite in the Royal.