Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The crowds always followed Christ and pressed upon him so much so that he had to stand in a boat to preach. We ought to use our imagination to think of ourselves as being part of that crowd. What must it have been like to listen to him, to see his miracles, to have him look at you? To spend time each day imagining this can help us a lot.
Luke tells us that there were two boats by the lake and in one of them Peter and the others were washing their nets. It the nets were not washed and stretched them they would rot. They had to be washed in fresh water to remain useful for the next day. You and I also have to be washed continually in the water of the Word and stretched by the Holy Spirit if we are to remain useful as a priest or a parent or a Christian.
We may be tempted to say why bother, the Lord is not using me so why do I need to be washed and ready? But I would say that you don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Who might walk into your office or your classroom or call you with a personal problem. A stock broker had a client in his office one day and was complaining about his situation in life. The broker who had been coming to church at the time said, do you go to church? And the client said he had been thinking of it but it had been a long time since he was there. The broker was more scared than the client but in the end he returned to church because of this conversation.
God cannot use us if we are stiff and brittle. He can use us if we are clean and stretched by the Word of God. If we take to heart what we hear and at least have the desire to be a little bit more like Christ. God wants to use your hands and feet and mouth to reach others, but we need to be ready, not perfect but ready to lend our body to God.
Jesus asked Peter to take him out a little from the shore on his boat. Why does he need Peter? He could have asked someone else or walked on the water himself. He asked Peter for the same reason he asks you and me to be a lector or to help with the kids or to greet the people at the start of the Mass. This small act of service opens Peter’s heart to something bigger. And the same can happen with us. Let Jesus get into your boat. If we do a little thing for God by helping here or teaching the kids a prayer it opens us more to listen to him.
When I was just coming back to the Church when I was on Wall Street 40 years ago my intention was to ask the priest how I could help with kids and one thing led to another and in the end turned my life completely around. It was not something that I planned or thought about. It just happened. Was it an accident? I don’t think so.
If Peter did not go out a little in his boat with Jesus he would not have heard the invitation of Jesus to go put out into the deep and make this extraordinary catch of fish. This event changed his life and he made this beautiful prayer: Lord, depart from me for I am a sinner. If you wonder why you are not more comfortable about speaking of God or doing something more with your life of faith it might be because you have not taken that first step, a small one which can open to something bigger.
Even Peter at first resists. He says, Master, everyone knows that you only fish at night so why should I throw the net into the sea in the middle of the day? But when he obeyed the catch of fish was so large that it nearly broke the net. Good thing they were washed and stretched.
If you need help, call the others around you. If we don’t ask for help the net will break, and everything will sink. We are not called to be reservoirs but channels of water; we not called to be stagnant water but water that flows, moves and spreads to others.
Peter’s confession that he is a sinner is really amazing. He didn’t analyze the steps that he took that day. He went immediately on his knees and said, depart from me, I am not worthy, I don’t deserve to be part of this. This is true worship: to be amazed at what is God doing for us, realizing that I am not worthy of it.
The net is still being drawn from the depths of the sea, from the waves of the world; many here have come to a deeper faith because they took a step forward. Jesus tells Peter that from this moment on you will be catching men and women. The original language implies that Peter was in the midst of a personal crisis. This decision to go out into the deep changed his life forever.
When you respond to God and get to know yourself in a deeper way there is nothing in this world that can bring you so much joy. Give it a try. We will be asking for help in a few weeks, try it at least once.