S1 E9: The Wisdom of Brokenness

Transcript

Carol Vassar:
 
From SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut, I'm Carol Vassar, and this is Living in Faith, Hope, and Love. Each week, our Pastor, Father Mark Suslenko, delves into Scripture, shares insights from the saints, prophets, and theologians, and discusses practical ways to cultivate faith, strengthen hope, and embody love in the world around us. Through his reflections and spiritual encouragement, this podcast aims to inspire you to live your Catholic faith with joy and purpose. Welcome. 

What qualities was Jesus seeking when drafting his team of disciples?  The men he chose were not rich, or learned, or popular.  They were definitely not perfect. They were actually wise in their hard-earned brokenness, which is exactly what Jesus was looking for in his followers then and now, according to Father Mark. It’s a story that unfolds in this episode of Living in Faith, Hope & Love, beginning with the Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time for February 9, 2025. It comes to us from Luke, Chapter 5, verses 1-11: 

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening
 to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch." Simon said in reply, "Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets."
 
 When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
 

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.

The Gospel of the Lord

“The Wisdom of Brokenness,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

Father Mark Suslenko:

Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. Depart from m,e Lord, for I am a sinful woman. 

As we look at our relationship with Jesus and the call to discipleship, we sometimes consider our unworthiness more than our worthiness of that call. I think in the back of many of our heads is this idea that in order for me to be presentable enough to God to be used to do God's work, I have to be polished. I have to present my best self, and I have to leave everything I know behind and go somewhere else. That kind of thinking leads us into error.  

God doesn't want our polished self. We don't have to shine ourselves up and make ourselves perfect before God can use us. God wants us as we are with all of our weaknesses, sinfulness, our anxieties, our worries, and, yes, even our lack of faith. 

Ponder it for a moment. I'm sure Jesus could have gone through his town and found many other people who were a lot more polished than the twelve guys he picked. He could have gone into the synagogues and found the ones who were in there praying every day, those very devout people who did everything the way they were supposed to do and said the prayers the way they were supposed to say them.   

But he didn't take them. 

He went to the ordinary folks: the fishermen. And even the ones who were despised by many: the tax collector. He gathered around himself the broken ones, the doubtful ones, the ones who would most assuredly say, "How can I be of use to you?"  

Imagine one of those newly called disciples going home to his wife and saying, "I've been called to follow Jesus. I don't know what he wants. I don't really know who he is, but I feel like I must go." And how that conversation may have played out and the interchange that may have occurred. But they left, and they went, and they followed Jesus. With their brokenness, with their doubts, with their fears, and with their anxieties, and with their worries, they went out. 

There's a lot of wisdom in what Jesus did in his selection of disciples. If you're struggling to pray, for example, and you want to reach out to a mentor or a spiritual friend to help you deepen your prayer life, would you rather reach out to someone who says to you, “I've never struggled with my prayers. I always say them dutifully. And I can give you some to say that may help you."? Or would you prefer to hear from someone who has struggled themselves in their relationship with God, but yet through that struggle, found their way to the Lord. 

If you're going through a depth of suffering, uncertainty, anxiety, is it more helpful to have someone who has never walked that road give you advice or consolation? Or is it more effective to have one who has walked that same journey but has still clung to their faith in God? Which one is more powerful? As a struggling parent, do you wanna hear from the parent who always did it right? Or do you want to hear from the parent who's having a hard time, just like you, are keeping it all together?  

There's a lot of wisdom in brokenness. There's a lot of wisdom in our unpolished self. God prefers it that way because if we deal with ourselves as we are, always seeking that relationship with God, then God can enter into that experience and make profound things happen. Even when we're tired and we are doubtful we're going to do any good. God can bring something good out of it. Even if we've been trying and trying and trying, if we put our faith and trust in God, we will bring forth a big catch. 

The key, however, is to not struggle with our brokenness alone but to always pair that with our relationship with God.  If we share our brokenness and our sinfulness and our fragility and our anxiety and our worry and our suffering with God, then God can use us then as a vehicle of his love for others. And as Catholics, the only way we can continually meet that God is by staying faithful to the sacraments of the church, it is there and only there that we have this wonderful, intimate opportunity to meet God face-to-face. Whether it's in the sacrament of the Eucharist, the sacrament of reconciliation, the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, whatever one it may be, there's always a meeting between one of God's children and the certainty of God's presence itself. 

And then God says, follow me.  

Now, when those original ordinary guys followed Jesus, not one of them said, "Oh, I have to take care of this first. I'll see you at 11 o'clock next Tuesday, maybe." Or "I have this to do now, but I promise that in three weeks I'll be back here again." Or "Let me take care of this one small concern, and I'll make sure I'm on board with you. You've got me." No one did that. They left it and followed.  

And so, what are we being asked to leave to follow? We're being asked to leave our preoccupation with the agenda of our lives.  There are so many things that can distract us from our relationship with God. There are so many things that can distract us from the sacraments, from the Eucharist. There are so many things that can pull us apart from our faith, just like there are so many things that can pull marriages apart. Pressures abound in our world.  Always fighting against things that we want unified. And so, if we give into those pressures, then of course we're gonna find ourselves faltering. If we move away from them, then we control them and set our hearts where they need to be: in our relationship with Jesus Christ. 

And so, yes, our Lord does ask us to follow him. He doesn't want us to clean ourselves up or present our polished selves before he can come in and do anything with us. He says, "No, as long as you're with me and you're in all the way, that brokenness, that sinfulness, your feelings of inadequacy, all of it I can use for good. Just trust me."  

And so, the Lord says to you today, "Follow me."

Carol Vassar:

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. If you like what you've heard today, please subscribe to Living in Faith, Hope, and Love on your favorite podcast app, and take a moment to leave a review.

SS. Isidore and Maria is an active parish community, so whether you’re a long-time parishioner or are just getting to know us through this podcast, we welcome you to join us at Masses or any of our other community events and services. Visit our parish website - isidoreandmaria.org - for a full schedule of Masses, services and other happenings. That's isidoreandmaria.org. We're also active on Facebook and Instagram.

On behalf of Father Mark, I'm Carol Vassar, and we thank you for listening to this episode of Living in Faith, Hope, and Love.