You have probably felt like St. Peter at times. Completely exhausted, having given it your all, frustrated with yourself and everyone because everything you do just seems to be a flop. And then someone asks you to do more, or to try again.

            For Peter, it’s an even crazier ask when Christ tells him to put out into the deep. He and his teammates have been doing what they’re supposed to. They’ve been working hard at night, when the fish are usually easiest to catch, and they’ve probably been working closer to the shore, where the fish are usually swimming amidst the plants growing in shallow water. What is supposed to work hasn’t worked, and now He wants them to try what is not supposed to work. Why would he say “yes”? Wouldn’t it be better to rest up, and try again tomorrow night?

            This miracle and the subsequent calling of Peter, James, and John to be “fishers of men” takes place after Christ has just healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a deadly fever. Peter has seen Him at work. He knows that this man has power. He calls Him “Master,” and at His command he will do even something completely counter-intuitive, something that is not supposed to work. He will go in search of the fish where they aren’t “supposed” to be.

            I have always imagined this scene like the other “miraculous catch” in John’s Gospel, the one that takes place after the Resurrection, when the disciples don’t realize at first that it is Christ who is inviting them to try again after a night of fruitless labor. I imagine Christ standing on the shore, exhorting the tired fishermen, and them being encouraged and heartened by the power of His conviction.

            Except that’s not how St. Luke tells us this happened. Christ isn’t on the shore, encouraging and motivating them. He’s already in the boat. He’s in the boat the whole time. While the crowd is pressing in on Him, getting too big to control, “He saw two boats there alongside the lake; … Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.” He doesn’t ask Peter’s permission. He just gets in.

            So often we think that we need that encouragement to try harder. If only we could just muster up enough strength. If only we had more perseverance and resolve. Maybe what we really need is a simpler realization: Christ is already in the boat.

            When Christ is already in the boat, everything is different. He is in the boat of our families, of our schools, of our community, our nation, and our world. Before that, though, He is in the boat of your soul. “There is a change in our soul, now that Christ has come aboard!”

            Peter, James, and John have caught nothing at night, but they take on an incredible catch in the light of day, when the fishermen would not normally be out at all. Our souls also fail to find what will truly satisfy them in the night, in the darkness of sin. Only illuminated by Christ’s light can we see the way forward, can we see what He is asking us to do and experience that incredible fruitfulness and joy that comes from doing what He has called us to do.

            Realizing what has happened, Peter no longer calls Him Master, but Lord. He recognizes Him as having a power and an authority beyond the extraordinary human man he previously thought Him to be. The miraculous catch is just the beginning, though. An incredible mission awaits, to be fishers of men, to bring in another catch so great that the nets of their human efforts and strength will be breaking. But Christ will once again be in the boat.

            Peter and the other Apostles will be sent to find the fish living in the “surge and waves of worldly things,” the ones caught up in the anxieties of the world, who do not know that Christ is in the boat. And likewise, everyone who claims to be His disciple is also sent out “into the deep”!

            Here is the irony, though: “for a fish, created for water, it is fatal to be taken out of the sea … But in the mission of a fisher of men, the reverse is true. We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendour of God’s light, into true life. We follow Christ in this mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that is salted with so many forms of alienation and onto the land of life, into the light of God. The purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. … Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. … [The people in the salty waters of death are longing to know that] each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him” (Benedict XVI. “HOMILY FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE PETRINE MINISTRY OF THE BISHOP OF ROME” https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_inizio-pontificato.html).

            When we think about that need to speak to others of our friendship with Christ, we tend to think about talking to strangers, and we think that would be too hard. Here’s another irony: that’s not where evangelization, being a fisher of men, starts, not because it would be too hard, but because it would be too easy. What is hard is to speak of friendship with Christ to someone you know and care about, someone with whom you have a relationship, a relationship that might be risked if they knew that you were a religious fanatic. Maybe your “deep water” isn’t so far away after all.

            Whether it is in that call to be a fisher of men, to speak of your friendship with Christ, or just in the daily grind that has you wearied and not knowing if you can go on, always remember: Christ is already in the boat.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

V Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXV