A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Pentecost

​+ How much time and energy do we spend in pursuits and activities that come to nothing? We hope, we plan, we organise, we worry and we fret—and so often our efforts bring little or no result. We can easily identify with Saint Peter’s frustrated retort in this morning’s Gospel when told to let down his nets once again: “Master, we toiled all night and caught nothing!” Giving up is much easier. Trying yet again brings with it the terrible risk of further humiliation, embarrassment and disappointment.
 
Yet for some reason, which is no doubt contained in Saint Peter’s use of the title “Master” following Our Lord’s teaching from his boat, Peter overcame his professional reticence and responded: “But at your word I will let down the nets.” This is an act of faith, not a practical calculation. It is dangerous. Even trying seems futile. It involves risk. In human terms it does threaten even more disappointment, failure and humiliation.
 
It is precisely this opposition between supernatural faith in Jesus, the Christ, the definitive revelation of God in human history, and our mundane, human calculations that constantly gratify our raging insecurities with which Our Lord challenges each of us in this Holy Mass. Are we prepared to “set out into the deep” as He commands? Or shall we linger in the shallows splashing around like children who refuse to grow up and face the challenges before them? And the lesson Our Lord wishes to teach each of us is that if we do place our faith in Him, if we do follow His command to leave everything to follow Him, the catch—the fruits—will be supernaturally abundant; they will be beyond our petty imaginings.
 
In the monastic refectory before the evening meal, we read the Benedictine martyrology for the following day, listening to the short biographies of those monks and nuns whose holiness of life amidst the vicissitudes of history the Church holds before us as examples of perseverance. They have persevered unto the end and have received the reward of that salvation in Christ to which they aspired.
 
But what we often forget is that they, too, were once young, unsure, insecure and hesitant. Some of them were serious sinners. They entered monasteries for various reasons—some reasons were noble, some were less so—but they persevered through the difficulties of initial formation, through the various interferences in the life of the monastery by civil or ecclesiastical powers, through the temptations that beset us all, through the discouragement that can sometimes overwhelm us. And they persevered for the right reason: in the hope of finding salvation in Christ. They endured odd brethren, less than perfect superiors (or even worse!) too much work and too many demands on their time, their own physical, psychological and intellectual shortcomings, etc., for Christ. It may even be that in their own lifetimes they did not see or truly appreciate the fruits of their perseverance. But today they are listed amongst the saints—for they were prepared to set out into the deep and let down their nets at the Lord’s command.
 
This principle holds true mutatis mutandis for vocations to the various derivative forms of monastic life that are today called “religious life,” as also for the life of a secular priest or deacon. But it is equally true for the vocation of Christian marriage and for those called to live the witness of Christian life in the world as a single man or woman. Fruitful perseverance in these vocations requires no less faith and commitment. How urgently today do the prisoners of our post-Christian, relativist world needs such witness! How urgently do they need to encounter He who is the true hope upon which this faith is founded!
 
In the face of the overwhelming fruit of his faith-full obedience to Christ’s command, Saint Peter fell to his knees and protested: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” So too might we. Which one of us can claim to be worthy of the Lord’s call? Which one of us does not know only too well how sinful and damaged we have been? Which one of us can in any sense claim to be qualified for all that God has in store for us?
 
And yet we know that the “sinful man” Peter became the rock on which Christ built His One, True Church. For the grace of vocation includes the power to leave behind the old, sinful man and—as the rite of the clothing of a novice so beautifully expresses it—to put on “the new man, who was created according to God, in justice and holiness of life.” We can become that man or woman whom Almighty God calls us to be. Our acceptance of His Will and our cooperation with its demands shall be instrumental in bringing about a miraculous catch that is beyond our present imagining. But we must first listen attentively to Our Lord’s words: “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.” 
 
Peter, James and John “left everything and followed Him” and thereby became great instruments of God’s Providence in the world. Are we prepared to leave behind our vain and futile efforts, to put our pet insecurities aside, and do the same? Dare we to have the faith to say “At your word, I will…” and to set out into the deep? If we will, Almighty God can work anew through us in the world today.
 
For the grace, and in particular for the courage, so to do, let us beg Him before His altar in this Holy Mass. +