I cherish the memories of the many weekends over the years of my childhood that my family spent in Grand Isle.  Before me and my brother and sister were old enough to surf-fish, we would play on the beach and in the shallower water near the shore of the Gulf, while our parents waded out into the sometimes waist-high water to cast their lines into the incoming surf with the hope of hooking something.  When the speckled trout were really “running,” I can remember how mom and dad and my grandparents would be catching them two at a time and literally throwing the fish up onto the shore for me and my siblings to collect, wash off, and place in ice chests.  This was an amazing and exhilarating experience, even though sometimes the fish would get away from us as we attempted to wash them off without a net in the forceful surf water striking the shore.

 In today’s gospel (Lk 5:1-11), we have the familiar setting found in so many of the Gospel stories, where there is a “crowd” involved, as well as a lake, a boat, some nets, and fish.  Jesus, with a crowd “pressing in” upon him, sees two boats moored along the lakeside, and promptly gets into one of them.  This boat actually belonged to Simon (Peter) who, along with other fishermen, was washing his nets after a long night of unfruitful fishing.  Jesus asks Simons to maneuver the boat a “short distance” from the shore, so that Jesus can teach the crowds from the lake itself.

After teaching the crowds a while, Jesus then asks Simon to go further and “put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon, in perhaps a mildly frustrated tone, responds that they had been fishing all night and caught nothing (I can imagine the perplexed look on Simon’s face, when Jesus proposed this).  But, Simon with slight suspicion agrees to do as Jesus requested, puts out into deeper water, lowers the nets, and catches so many fish that his nets are about to tear.  He actually has to ask the assistance of the other boat in order to bring in all the fish to the shore.  In fact both boats were so heavily laden with the caught fish that they were in danger of sinking!  When they brought the fish to the shore, in astonishment they put down everything and followed Jesus.

In one sense, this entire Gospel scene could be seen as a personal encounter with God.  I can envision my own life as one characterized by busyness, wherein there are so many things that crowd and “press in” on me.  There is a felt need to find a “boat” and retreat from the “shoreline” of this busyness.  When this happens, many times it is an invitation to go “deeper” onto or into the “lake” – deeper than the surface items of everyday life. And this always (and I really mean always) involves the requirement to “lower my nets,” i.e., to let go of something (agendas, attitudes, mental fixations, prejudgments, or simply a “busy” schedule)!

Along with this experience comes a growing awareness within myself that I am “catching” something, and it increases to fullness, and this fullness or abundance breaks out of the “net” of my limited expectations in such a way that I suddenly am struck by the realization that this is NOT JUST FOR ME, and it is not just happening TO ME!  And this, I believe, is another perhaps even more important sense that the Gospel story can be grasped.

It seems to me that the abundance experienced by a personal encounter with Christ can never be fully realized unless we allow others in.  Even to say allowing others “in” is somewhat of an incorrect description, because the truth of the matter seems to be that they are already “in” and in fact have to be “in.”  We just have to come to an awareness of this.

There is no way that Simon was going to be able to handle all those fish by himself!  His net was breaking and his boat was going to sink.  Sharing, rather than being optional, seems to be a requirement for truly receiving the gifts that God so wants to give us.    The flow of gifts is always an overflow because they are for everyone everywhere and all the time!  One net can never “catch” it all – it takes an inter-net connection.  And when we can listen to the consoling words at the end of the Gospel, “Do not be afraid,” we can begin to bring our own “boats to the shore,” embrace this shared abundance, and in our own way “leave everything” to follow TOGETHER.

Peace,

Thomas