Gone Fishin'

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

Peter had a horrible self image. He was a bumbler, a fool, and a coward. He usually said exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. He usually spoke without thinking. This was one such time. When confronted with his first miracle, he didn’t say, “Wow, Jesus, that was great, thanks.” Or, “How did you do that? Who are you?” Instead, when confronted with the unexplainable, the first thing he thought was how unworthy we was to receive such a gift.  He got one thing right, he was a sinful man. He must have been acutely aware of his shortcomings if that was the first thing he thought of when in the presence of pure love himself.

I can imagine Peter struggling with himself every day of his life. Like most of us, he probably wanted to live up to God’s law as he learned it in the synagogue, but then the frustrations of life came up and he would blow it. He’d say or do something stupid, no matter how hard he tried. And every time he failed to live up to the ideal he beat himself up a little more. I know how he must have felt. Whenever I screw up, and it’s often, it’s usually because I don’t think about what I’m saying or doing and how it will affect others. Whenever people call me out as a hypocrite I tell them, “Just think how bad I’d be if I didn’t have my faith to help hold me in check a bit. This is nothing compared to what I would be.”

I myself felt I was unworthy to be called to the diaconate. I actually was thinking of dropping out six months before ordination, because I did not think I could live up to the image I had of what a deacon should be. All the deacons I knew were quiet, humble, gentle men, sort of grandfatherly figures. I am none of those, and I knew I probably would never be. But then a wise priest told me that God wasn’t calling me to be perfect. He knew better than anyone the kind of man I was, and he was calling me anyway. He wanted me with all my imperfections. He was calling me as I was, and he wanted me as I was. My job was to say yes to the call and then struggle to find a way to live it in my everyday life.

Peter’s feelings of unworthiness were perfectly natural given whose presence he was in. Humility comes from just that self-awareness. It was Peter’s humility that ultimately made him prince of the apostles. As Fr. James Martin puts it in his book, My Life with the Saints, “Peter is among the greatest of the saints because of his humanity, his shortcomings, his doubts, and moreover, his deeply felt understanding of all these things. Only someone like Peter, who understood his own sinfulness and the redeeming love of Christ, would be able to lead the infant church and lead others to Jesus. Only someone as weak as Peter could do what he did.”

Jesus had a tendency to call people, and then send them out to tell others about him. He completely ignored Peter’s protestations and simply said, “From now on you will be catching men.” No judgments. No qualifications. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus does not go out searching for Peter, James and John. Peter’s boat was simply the closest. Peter won the luck of the draw, and it changed his life, and ours, forever.

Like a fisherman, Jesus sometimes cast a net; sometimes he used a line and a hook. He used five loaves and two fish as bait for 5000 people, and he spent hour’s one-on-one explaining profound truths to Nicodemus. Whenever you cast a wide net, you never know what you’ll catch. You just throw it out there and hope for the best. When you fish with a line, you use bait that’s specifically attractive to one individual.

Jesus didn’t play favorites, he called everyone he encountered. He called them right then, where they were in their lives, at that moment in time. He didn’t wait until they had completed seminary studies, or had gotten married, or had bought a house or gotten a new job. He called them right then, casting his net and hoping they’d answer his call. Then he moved onto the next person, and the next, and the next.

We encounter Jesus in our everyday lives. Peter, James and John were at work. St. Francis was praying in a church. St. Ignatius Loyola was recuperating from a wound he had received in battle. Each of them was profoundly affected by their encounter with Jesus; most of us do not have a single, life-changing event. We have to look for Jesus in the most mundane ways and in the most ordinary people. And whenever we do find Jesus, it is easy for us to fall back on Peter’s excuse: Leave me alone because I am a sinner.

If you read the lives of the saints, especially those we consider to be the greatest, one common theme you will quickly see is their sinfulness. And some of them committed some whoppers. Moses was a murderer. St. Augustine had a son out of wedlock and lived with a woman not his wife for twenty years. Dorothy Day had an abortion plus an illegitimate child. Saints are not perfect, but they are open to being perfected. When called, many will fight the call with all they’ve got, only to give in gradually. God can be very persistent. And after they answer the call things usually don’t get easier, they get worse. Saints don’t get absolved from pain and temptation, they get polished by them.

Mother Theresa said, “God is not calling me to be successful, he’s calling me to be faithful”. I remember that whenever it seems like everything I do is futile, that we’re losing the battle for souls in a big way. Every time I see what our society has become and how far away from God we’re moving, I think. “It’s not my responsibility if people reject the call. My job is to cast a line or a net to the best of my ability to as many people as I can. It is up to the Holy Spirit to do the rest. I cannot change hearts, only Jesus can. The only person I have responsibility for is myself. I can choose to answer the call or not. In the end, I will stand before God alone, by myself. And I will be judged on how I answered that call.

That’s not a fatalistic attitude, it’s realistic. We are all called to go forth and make disciples of all nations, but it has to begin with me.

Catholics need to rediscover our evangelical side. For all those years when Christianity was the dominant religion in the culture, Catholicism grew largely because it was part of the culture. You were Catholic because your family was, and your extended family was, and all your friends and your parents’ friends were. But now that the fastest growing group in the country is the “nones”, those with no religion. The culture is turning away from Christianity. When it was cultural, it was easy to say that I can evangelize others simply by the example of living a good life. That is no longer the case. Today, Catholics are called to do more than just live examples of love. We are called to actually go out and tell somebody about it.

When I was a sales manager, whenever I added an additional salesperson, sales went up. Go figure. Common sense. So, if you want things to grow, call more people to help. Don’t you think God knows that? Don’t you think he knows that if numbers are down, the last thing you do is call fewer people. The first thing you do is exhort the ones you have to do more. That’s us. Then we all double our efforts.

Do you really believe that God has been calling fewer men to the priesthood the past 50 years? In 1960 there were about 37 million Catholics in the U.S. Today that number is around 67 million. Even if the percentages of men being called now is the same as it was then, logically, there would be a lot more priests today than in 1960. So what, has God been making cutbacks? Is he looking for increased productivity from our priests, trying to do more with less?

If God were like the typical businessman, if he were getting fewer answers to his call, wouldn’t he just call more men rather than fewer? The scandal of the priest shortage is not that fewer men are being called, but that fewer are answering the call. The scandal of Christianity is not that God is calling fewer people to him, but that we Christians are not calling them. But we must first answer our own call.

Watch out, Jesus just got in your boat.