After Jesus 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.

(Luke 5:4-6)

 

This is a different kind of fishing story.  It’s about professional fishermen coming up empty and an unemployed carpenter who commandeers their boat, preaches a sermon and catches the limit.

 

Some people don’t catch fish because they refuse to go out into deep water.  I know it’s safer on the bank and more convenient to have all of your “stuff” at hand.  Maybe you like fighting the crabs—pick, pick, pick—and the hotties and grunters and turtles pulling off the bait before the big fish get a chance.  Some diehards try wrapping the bait in pantyhose, using huge hooks and hunks of bait or even the little ones they catch as bait to lure in the big one!  But in the end you just have to leave the shallows.

 

Fish, like people, prefer to travel in groups called schools or to hang out together in crowds called shoals.  This behavior spreads the risk of being a big predator’s lunch and increases the chance of finding a shoal-mate, or soul-mate as the case may be.  They prefer larger shoals of their own kind, similar size and appearance to themselves, healthy and kin (when recognized).  There is a phenomenon called the oddity effect—that any shoal member that stands out in appearance will be preferentially targeted by predators—explains why fish prefer to shoal with individuals that resemble themselves in language, race, creed, culture, social status, education level, taste and prejudice.  In her first novel about life in a Massachusetts prep school, Prep (2005), Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld wrote:

 

I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.

 

But we’re talking about fish, right?

 

Everybody knows the schools of big fish are in the deep water.  And the first rule of fishing is you’ve got to go where the fish are.  We should not limit this to fish.  Jesus is giving us a spiritual principal.   We could equally say the same about faith and hope, abundance or wisdom or love, healing or peace.  All those things we seek cannot be found if you simply refuse to go deep.  Deep water brings risk.  Many of us have never gone beyond knee-deep, because of the sharks in the water.  It matters not how or who planted that fear in you; it takes a great faith to overcome a great fear of the deep water.

 

Deep water is so dark that its depths are called the midnight zone where no light can penetrate.  When you cannot see, you have to trust in the words and directions of others who have passed through deep water to make it there. Jesus is always inviting people to the deeper end of things:

 

And in the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out for fear.  But immediately He spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart, it is I; have no fear.’  And Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, if it is You, bid me come to You on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ (Matthew 14:25-29)

 

The deep water of faith is where those things we say we want are swimming around.  The shallows are where we begin the adventure, not where we finish.

 

There is a time for classes and listening and a time to live what we've learned, a time to receive and a time to give sacrificially, a time to worship the Lord in church, and a time to launch out into the depths and lead the world in the worship of the Lord. 

Deep water is where we have to go to get what God has for us.

 

Some people don't catch fish because they don't expect to catch fish.  Jesus tells Simon: ‘Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.’  What an encouragement.

 

This is wisdom for us who worship regularly.  Week after week we go to the deep water of Mass, but do we go preparing for a catch?  Do we go in faith believing that God is waiting there to bless us?  Or do we go to appease a spouse, forced by our parents, in order to “network” and be seen by others or, worse, just out of mindless habit?

 

Expectations count with God.  St. Paul and St. John tell us to come to prayer in faith believing that what we ask of God is already granted:

 

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

(Philippians 4:6)

 

And this is the confidence, which we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of Him. (1 John 5:14-15)

 

Expectation is the first-born child of faith, …the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).  No expectation means no real faith, all mist and no hope.

 

When you say you believe in God, you are not agreeing with some abstract idea, some “god-spray,” as Pope Francis once preached.

 

We believe in persons and when we talk to God we speak with persons who are concrete and tangible, not some misty, diffused god-like ‘god spray’ that’s a little bit everywhere but who knows what it is.

(Homily at Mass in the St. Martha Residence).

 

No, you are saying that you expect the things that God has promised.  You’re saying that you are a partner with God Who is the giver of …every good endowment and every perfect gift (James 1:17).  And among those gifts God has promised us are fruitfulness and fish and forever.  AMEN.