Putting out to sea: Jesus calls; Peter follows

The post Putting out to sea: Jesus calls; Peter follows appeared first on Catholic Herald.

Feb 10, 2025 - 04:00

Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. (Luke 5:3)

In this Sunday’s Gospel we see the first moment when Jesus calls Simon Peter to join His mission.

The call begins when Christ, uninvited, requisitions his boat and interrupts his net-washing: Simon is asked to leave this task to “put out a little from the land”. The first contact we have with Christ often comes through the request of a friend: it seems Jesus knew Simon already, but now their relationship is moving beyond friendship.

Jesus calls us constantly to greater and greater generosity: next He asks him not simply to “put out a little” but to “put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch”. Peter is not only asked to do more, but to trust Christ in something which he knows better than the carpenter from Nazareth: fishing. Jesus does not want us to distort our professional work by overly-spiritualising it, but He does want us to surrender it to Him. If ever we have complete control and expertise in something at the human level, let’s offer it to God, recognising that all our good works come from His grace.

Peter has been listening to Jesus’s preaching in his boat and now he listens to him personally, albeit on his own terms. Christ asked Peter alone to put out into the deep and then, with his companions, to “let down the nets”. Sceptical of this fishing tactic, Peter ignores the first instruction, given to him alone, and then, alone, does what he was asked to do with others. “Master,” he says, “we toiled all night and took nothing! But at Your word I will let down the nets” (5:5). Our hearing can be selective when it comes to the inspirations Jesus gives: we like to act alone, and so to be in control.

Despite Peter’s rearrangement of His commands, Jesus still works a miracle, and His words are proved true since Peter needed others to help him with the nets. Imagine how much greater a wonder Jesus might have worked if Peter had really listened to Him! The same applies to us.

Peter is filled with awe and a recognition of his sinfulness. Jesus has surpassed all his worldly ambitions in his professional work to lead him to follow him. Some Jesus calls to follow Him precisely in their work; others He calls from their work to something else.

Jesus knew that this moment of his first calling was so important for Peter that He later repeated it. After denying Him three times and then a mysterious encounter, one-on-one, on Easter Day (1 Corinthians 15:1) Jesus repeats this miraculous catch of fish to renew Peter’s vocation (John 21:4-8). He will remind us of the moment of our first calling when we need to begin again to follow Him.

On the shore, after this second extraordinary catch, “Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish” (John 21:13), evoking memories of the feeding of the five thousand in that same place and prompting thoughts of the Eucharist in us. In Holy Communion, touching our lips, Jesus gives us the grace to say “yes” to His call, as Isaiah did in the first reading after his lips were seared by the angel’s coal.

“Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’ And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am! Send me.’” (Isaiah 6:6-8)