Our Vocation and Mission Trustingly To Put Into the Deep, Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), February 9, 2025

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
February 9, 2025
Is 6:1-8, Ps 138, 1 Cor 15:1-11, Lk 5:1-11

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily:

• Today in the Liturgy of the Word we have three vocation stories — Simon Peter’s, Isaiah’s and Paul’s — each of which teaches us something about our own vocation and mission and provide us a chance to to renew our commitment to our calling to be faithful disciples and task to be ardent charitable apostles.
• Early one morning, Jesus was at the shore of the Sea of Galilee, teaching. As more people began to awaken and come down to the shore, the crowd listening to Jesus grew. As Jesus was being crushed by the crowds, he asked Simon Peter to borrow his boat so that he might sit a little bit away from the shore to teach. With the wind coming over his shoulder as a natural amplifier, Jesus nourished the famished crowd with his words. But it was no coincidence that Jesus was there that morning. It wasn’t serendipitous that he asked to borrow Simon’s boat. Jesus had come to do more than teach the crowd. He had come to catch a big fish, namely a fisherman. He had come to convert, call and commission Simon.
• After Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon Peter, “Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch!” Few statements could have sounded more ridiculous to a Galilean fisherman. Simon must have had to control himself from saying something unkind. He was a professional on the Sea of Gennesaret, and like all the other fishermen, he knew that fish were successfully caught in shallow water at night, not in deep water in broad daylight. It would have sounded as if a fisherman had told Jesus, a carpenter, to drive in nails by holding the head of the hammer and striking the nail with the handle. It was contrary to all practical wisdom. Moreover, Simon Peter was exhausted after a long night and frustrated that he had nothing to show for hours of hard work. He had just gone through the laborious process of cleaning his equipment to put everything away for the day. So in what was probably the nicest way he could, he replied, “Master, we have worked all night but have caught nothing.” He likely looked silently into Jesus’ eyes for understanding. But Jesus didn’t flinch. He looked at Peter intensely without saying a word. What was going on in Peter’s mind? “No one had ever spoken like this one,” Peter might have been whispering to himself: “Is it possible that he might know something I don’t about fishing? That’s highly unlikely, but how can I refuse what he asks for and embarrass him and myself in front of this entire crowd?” Peter finally gave in. “At your word,” he told Jesus with heroic courtesy, “I will let down the nets.” He and his tired team got into the boat again and paddled far away from shore to the deep water. Probably many of those who had listened to Jesus were watching to witness how the drama would unfold.
• Luke tells us what happened. Peter and his companions won the fisherman’s equivalent of the megabucks, catching so many fish that their nets were about to break and two boats were about to sink. Simon Peter couldn’t help but grasp, however, how unworthy he was of such a gift from God. Upon disembarking, rather than running to Jesus, hugging him and thanking him, he fell down at Jesus’ knees and begged, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” He was afraid of what this blessing to a sinner like him might mean. Jesus spoke right to Peter’s heart and said, “Do not be afraid!” Then he gave Peter his vocation: “From now on, you will be catching men!” When they had brought their haul to shore, Peter and Andrew, James and John, left everything behind — their boats, their nets, the treasure they had just caught — and followed Jesus. And they went out on a worldwide fishing expedition. As we would see after the Resurrection, when the Lord would renew Peter in his mission by recapitulating a wondrous draught of fish, Peter would catch 3,000 on Pentecost, putting out into the deep at the Lord’s command and continuing to do so until he would proclaim it by his crucifixion three decades later in Rome.
• Back in 2001, at the conclusion of the last ordinary Jubilee, John Paul II proposed Jesus’ imperative “Put out into the deep water,” Duc in altum!, as the motto for our life in the Church in this third millennium because so often we today can feel that we’re in Peter’s sandals. In many areas of life, but particularly in spiritual concerns, we can work so hard and seem to have so little to show for it. In our prayer life, we can sometimes think that we’re getting nothing out of our efforts. With our call to spread the Gospel, we can strive diligently to share our faith with family members and friends and others with whom we interact, and believe that we’ve made no progress. With regard to the culture that surrounds us, it is not uncommon for people to become exasperated, not knowing even where to begin to help our society become more moral. In some parts of the highly secularized world like western Europe, in Muslim territories in the Middle East, in communist areas like China, and in Protestantizing areas like various parts of Latin America, many can lose hope at the power of the Gospel lived by those in the Church to draw people to Christ in Peter’s boat. To all of those in these situations, Jesus says, like he said to Peter, “Put out into the deep water.… Trust in me!” We might think that from a human point of view what Jesus asks us to do makes little or no sense, or won’t work, or is a waste of time. We can deem the odds infinitesimally slim. Jesus, after all, says so many things, that fly in the face of the common human way of looking at things: “Blessed are you when they persecute you, mock you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely. … Unless you pick up your Cross daily and follow me… Turn the other cheek … Forgive 70 times 7 times. … Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner… Unless you gnaw on my flesh and drink my blood.” But to each of these, like Peter, we’re called to say, “Lord, at your word, I will lower the nets,” leave behind the security of the shore and of human wisdom and put out into the deep trusting that all things are possible with God.
• John Paul II was convinced that these words — “Put out into the deep!” — aptly describe the Church’s situation today and what needs to be our response. The reason is because they point to a trust in the Lord’s words above every other factor, that even if we were to have all the expert consultants in the world on one side, and Jesus alone on the other, we should trust Jesus. But that’s not the only reason the Pope selected it. In it, as well, we find very clearly spelled out what our Christian vocation and mission is today. The Lord Jesus calls each Christian, as he called Peter and Andrew, James and John, to be a fisher of men, to go out to try to bring other fish into the salvation of Peter’s boat, the Church, in which Christ is still sitting and teaching. Being a fisher of men is not the job only of priests, bishops and religious, of catechists and Catholic schoolteachers, but each of the baptized. It’s our mission as a Christian, flowing from our baptismal vocation. It’s not enough for us merely to pray each day. It’s not enough for us faithfully to live by Christ’s commandments, work hard, and then mind our business. Christ calls us to love our neighbor. And the greatest act of love we can do for our neighbor is to bring the neighbor to Christ and bring Christ to our neighbor. We are all called to be missionaries of charity in this way. Each of us, as Pope Francis wrote in his 2014 exhortation on The Joy of the Gospel, is called to say not just that the Church, that each of us, has a mission but is a mission. Each of us is called to grasp, “I am a mission on this earth. This is the reason why I am here in this world.” Each of us is called to hear Christ saying to us, “Just as the Father sent me, so I send you,” to hear him tell us, “Go and make disciples of all nations” and “Go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” And just like in the Gospel, Peter, James, John and Andrew — the soon-to-be apostles — “called to their friends in the other boat to come and help them,” so the successors of St. Peter and the apostles are calling to us, their friends, to come to help them bring more and more fish into Peter’s boat, to share in the task of the mission to those places that have never received the Gospel and of the new evangelization to those where the Gospel needs to be heard and lived anew. That’s why St. John Paul II told us back in 2001, “At the beginning of the new millennium, and at the close of the Great Jubilee during which we celebrated the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Jesus and a new stage of the Church’s journey begins, our hearts ring out with the words of Jesus when … he invited the Apostle to ‘put out into the deep’ for a catch: ‘Duc in altum’(Lk 5:4). Peter and his first companions trusted Christ’s words and cast the nets. … Duc in altum! These words ring out for us today. … We must look ahead, we must ‘put out into the deep,’ trusting in Christ’s words. … As this millennium begins, allow the Successor of Peter to invite the whole Church to make this act of faith.”
• Many of us might think we’re unworthy for such a task, that the Lord couldn’t possibly be calling us. But the readings today are a very strong rejection of that line of thought. In the first reading, Isaiah was awed at God’s majesty and holiness, as he beheld in a vision of seraphs singing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah was well aware of his sinfulness and thought he was unfit to be in the presence of such holiness. “Woe is me! I’m lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” But God fixed that problem, sending a seraph with a burning charcoal to cleanse his mouth, take away his guilt and blot out his sin so that he could use that mouth to spread God’s word. In the Gospel, faced with the Lord Jesus’ majesty in the working of the miracle, Peter exclaimed, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” but the Lord told him not to be afraid, because the Lord had come to the seashore precisely to call that sinful man to himself and then to send him out to call other sinners to repentance. The story of St. Paul from the second reading is perhaps the most powerful — not just of the readings today but of all time. He used to hunt down, torture and kill Christians for a living. If anyone was unworthy to carry out the task of preaching the Good News, it was this man, who had tried to extinguish it. But the Lord met him on the road to Damascus and purified him so that he might be his chosen vessel to take the Gospel to the nations. St. Paul says today, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.” As he writes, he passed on to us as of the first importance the Gospel he himself received and even used his past sinfulness as a motivation: “I worked harder than any of them,” because he had been forgiven even more. His whole life became a commentary on what he wrote earlier to the Christians in Corinth, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!”
• Faced with their callings, all of us should find great hope and inspiration. Today, as in the time of Isaiah, and Peter and Paul, the Lord says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Each of us is summoned, like Isaiah, to say, “Here I am, Lord!” We cannot pass the buck to the next Christian in line, the sister sitting next to us in the chapel, the priest at the pulpit, the missionary in the remote village, the Catholic school teacher or catechist, or those who speak at Catholic megaconferences, or minister on Catholic television or radio. Each is us is called — without exception — to answer personally, “Send me.” We’re summoned, like Peter, Andrew, James and John, to leave behind whatever might keep us from the Lord and follow him, being sent out into the deep water of the world to fish for men and women, boys and girls. We’re called, like St. Paul, to “work harder than any” of the rest in passing on to others as of first importance the Gospel we have received, because of the Lord’s great mercy, love and trust in calling us and sending us by our Baptism and Confirmation. We’re called, as we prayed in the Psalm, to sing God’s praises even in the sight of angels, not to mention the saints and our fellow human beings, giving thanks to him with all our heart and proclaiming his praises.
• Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s whole life is a witness to how to put this Gospel into practice. Who would have thought a young girl from Skopje, not to mention even a successful teaching Sister of Our Loreto and headmistress in Entally, would have changed the history of the world and become a pivotal figure in Church and salvation history? But when the Lord spoke to her on a train to Darjeeling, when the Lord asked her to come be his light, to satiate his infinite thirst for souls, to go out a mission of charity throughout the globe, with trust in his words, she launched out into the deep and inspired several of her former students and so many future daughters to say with her, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” That worldwide fishing expedition spreading Christ’s love continues here, even in the snow, from 145th Street in the Bronx.
• Today, at this Mass, Jesus has gotten into Peter’s boat, a symbol of the Church, again. Like he taught the crowds, he has taught us from this humble pulpit. He knows how hard we’ve been working, but he tells us to trust in him as he sends us out again, when we least expect it, to where we least expect it. To strengthen us for this mission, he is about to feed us with his body and blood. What Isaiah witnessed in his vision is about to be fulfilled, when all the seraphim, cherubim and angels will surround this altar as we join in their unending hymn to the King, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. Heaven and Earth are full of your glory.” God will send us not a seraphim with a burning ember to cleanse our unclean mouths; but as so many fathers of the Church saw as an application of this passage, he will awesomely come himself to feed us with the incarnate purifying fire of his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. The Lord whom we’re about to receive is thrice holy and wants to make us holy so that he can send us out with the instructions — Duc in Altum! — to fish not just in the East and Hudson Rivers, not just in Long Island Sound, but even on the streets of the Bronx, Manhattan and the missions of the world. The only fitting response is to make Isaiah’s words our own, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!,” and like Peter say, as sinners loved by and trusting in God, “At your word, Lord, I will lower the nets for a catch!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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