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In the Catholic Church, every time on Sunday we proclaim the Creed we proclaim that Jesus Christ is true God and true Man. And I think most of us are convinced that Jesus is God... I hope so. And most of us are probably somewhat convinced He was a man. But Jesus was a man, He was a normal kind of guy, today’s gospel is proof of it. The minute He got done preaching the first thing He wanted to do is go fishing... and like all men they have to tell fishing stories, and this is one of the great fishing stories in the history of the Church, where Jesus goes fishing. Except Jesus kind of had guts because He went fishing with professional fishermen, and He was a Rabbi and He didn’t mind giving them advice on how to go about fishing.
I want to go through today’s story real quickly, then I want to go through it again and point out the deeper symbolism it has for all of our lives.

Jesus is teaching by the side of the sea and it says He got on a boat and went a little ways almost forming a natural amphitheater. Away from the press of the crowd He was able to teach from this boat, and when He was done teaching He turned to them and told the disciples: "Lets go fishing." Exciting I suppose if you are a rabbi, not so exciting thing to do if that’s what you do for a living. But listening to Jesus they set forth and they went forth to fish. And Jesus’ command to them is this: "Set forth out into the deep waters." And so they set out into the lake of Galilee, and then He challenges them to lower their nets. And they protest because they’ve already done this throughout the entire day and found absolutely nothing, it’s been fruitless. But Jesus commands, they obey, and the rest of it is gospel history; that they pulled forth so much that they did not only filled one boat but from those one nets they were able to fill a whole second boat with everything that they had, and realizing what a miracle it was to catch that many fish Peter immediately realizes that this Man before him, this Rabbi from the north in Galilee is in fact more than just a Rabbi, and Peter immediately realizes that Jesus is a holy Man, a truly holy Man; and Peter feels amazingly sinful in His presence. And Peter asks Him to leave. Now did you ever stop and ask where is He going to go? I mean basically, he is literally saying go jump in the lake because they are on a boat, so like where is Jesus going to go? But Peter doesn’t even want to be in the boat with Christ because Jesus is so holy and Peter realizes he is so sinful. Then Jesus said to him: "Do not fear", and then He commissions Peter and those that are with him to become the first apostles, to be fishers of men; and it says that they left everything. The best fishing day in Peter’s life and he left it all behind; it doesn’t even say they took a fish with them, the boats the fish, can you imagine that scene? They hit the shore, they left two boats filled with fish and they walked off and didn’t come back again.
But lets look again at the story and ask what Jesus wants to teach us, because there is something deeper in this story.
First Jesus said: "Set out into the deep waters", faith always will lead us to the deep parts of our lives, and that’s where Jesus wants to take us, if we want to be close to Christ we have to go to those places that are deep, and the deep waters symbolizes that place where maybe we have found in our own lives to be fruitless, that we have no hope and it seems that we can find nothing there of value or of purpose. Faith always takes us to those kind of deep waters. Jesus wants us to stop and to go with Him to those places in our lives. Maybe its a habit of sin in our lives that we’ve never been able to break, and its there and we feel like it’s fruitless to even fight or to try to change that part of our lives, and yet Jesus demands of us to go into those deep waters, to lower the nets of faith and believe that He’ll bring about change.
Maybe there is a difficult relationship in your life, that relating to that person seems fruitless, and yet Jesus wants us in faith to enter into that relationship and to search for fruit. Maybe it’s the obligations of our state in life, maybe being a mother or a father, a child, a son or a daughter, maybe it’s being a priest, maybe those things don’t some days seem to give us much life, maybe they seem like a terrible routine that don’t give us much meaning, seem a burden to us. But Jesus wants us to enter into those parts of our lives with deep faith into deep water, and to find what is fruitful, what is true and what is real in those parts of our lives.
The more we know Christ, the more we’ll be convinced of one thing. Not only that He is God, but that we are sinful. And we too, like Peter have to get over it. I think Father Hilton made this point, I think he made it over the breakfast table. You know if Peter had not got over his sinfulness in today’s gospel, and Paul had not gotten over his sinfulness in the second reading, this church would be called something but it wouldn’t be called Saints Peter and Paul.
God knows you are sinners, God doesn’t really care on a certain level. He wants you to change from your sinfulness, He wants me to change, but He wants to use us; that is not an excuse (that we struggle with sin in our lives), we still have to follow the Lord, we still have to be faithful to what He’s asked of each one of us. It’s a danger in the Christian life, that we are so proud in our sinfulness that we forget that God is Almighty, and that He can even use us.
Today’s gospel also contains a great natural miracle, this huge catch of fish. If you’ve ever fished and you know how unsuccessful a day can be, you know that this is truly a miracle. But miracles are not ends in themselves, they’re supposed to give us deeper faith and trust. And faith leads us to those places that we think are absolutely hopeless; and I hope that when you came to church today God will give you the grace now to come up with a few areas of your life that you find kind of hopeless, because God wants you to go back into those areas of your life with deeper faith and to find Him. To lower the nets and to find what Christ is saying to each one of you and to me.
The real miracle here is not that Jesus filled two boats with fish. What’s the miracle is that he filled the several hearts of these fishermen with faith, and immense faith, that they left everything.
You know, I’m the vocations director for the Archdiocese of Denver and it is easier to move a mountain some days than to get a young man to think about being a priest. It drives me crazy. And guys come into my office and they say: "Well Father I’ll do it but I want to know for sure!!" And I say: "You know what? I’ve been a priest for almost eight years and I don’t know for sure whether this is what I’m supposed to be doing; I’m pretty sure, but there is a few mornings I wake up and I’m not so sure." That’s the nature of the Christian life, and that’s why faith leads us on and on in what we are called to do within our own lives. Jesus doesn’t want to give us miracles in our lives, Jesus greatest miracle is the gift of faith.
You know, these guys became rich men suddenly with all this fish and they walked away from it, because instead of having plenty in their lives they suddenly had something even better, they had purpose, and with that they set forth in faith.
I like this definition of faith I found in a book: "Faith means that you want God and you want nothing else." That’s what faith is, faith is a hunger and it’s that hunger that made them abandon those fish and those boats and to follow Christ.
Faith is not a very safe thing, it’s very dangerous. If you feel like your life is boring pray for some more faith and use it; you’ll be living a life on the edge. As the kids always say when I sky with them, the high school kids, they always say don’t sky in your comfort zone father. Well the Christian life should never be lived in the comfort zone, you should always be skiing at your max., on the edge, and that’s what we are called to do in the Christian life, to push ourselves a little bit further.
God has hidden within each one of us this gift of faith and we have to harvest it, and that faith will lead us to know the abundant truth of who God Is. God has made each one of us, but we’ve got to trust, and we’ve got to set forth. There’s lots of areas of our lives where we’ve probably said: "I can do nothing with this!" God can! And even if God may not change the situations of our lives, God can give us tenacious faith.
You know, when you are buried on the day of your death, I don’t care how nice your suit is or how nice your dress is or how nice my chasuble is, the only thing Jesus wants to know when He opens up the lid and looks in there is: "Do they have any faith?" That’s what Christ will look for, that’s what will bring us to salvation, is that awesome gift of faith.
So the task I give you now is to go to those areas in your life that are difficult, lower the nets of faith and look for Christ, because He is with you in those areas; in the most difficult, perhaps the most sinful parts or your life Christ is waiting there to show you His glory and His power. So, each one of us have to have the courage to go to those areas of our lives.
So, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Almighty God I command you: Go Fishing!