Duc In Altum

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of my favorite saints has always been St. Peter.  No, I don’t want to be pope (being a pastor is enough responsibility for me!), but I like St. Peter.  He’s one of the great apostles of Jesus, who always has great things to say, unless he’s putting his foot in his mouth (as he also often does).  He is, we might say, very relatable.  I’d like to believe that I have had great moments of faith and trust in God (even if great is a sliding scale), but I also know that I have had my own outbreaks of foot-in-mouth disease.

And since I like St. Peter so much, today’s Gospel is one of my favorites.  It’s St. Luke talking about how St. Peter was called by Jesus.  St. Peter (still going by Simon at this point) is fishing all night and catching nothing (side note: have you ever noticed that St. Peter is never able to catch fish on his own?!?).  Then Jesus, who, from all outside views, knows nothing about fishing, tells him to go out again, and put into deep waters.  St. Peter begrudgingly does this, and then catches so many fish that he has to call his partners, James and John (who also became apostles), to help him drag it in.  St. Peter realizes that he is in the presence of someone special, someone great, and makes a confession of his own sinfulness.  Jesus tells him not to be afraid, because he will be catching men from now on.

When others hear this story, they sometimes ask me how I came to follow Jesus as a priest.  And certainly, all of our readings focus on calls: on the call of Isaiah to be a prophet; the call of St. Paul to preach the Gospel as the last apostle; and, as I mentioned, the call of St. Peter to follow Jesus as one, and the chief, of His apostles.  

Some priests I know have amazing stories like St. Peter of Jesus doing something great and spectacular in their lives.  But for me, that’s not the case.  As an eighth grader, I started thinking about what I wanted to do as an adult (so that I could concentrate on the right classes in high school, get into a good college in a field in which I wanted, and then get a good job).  If it were up to me, I wanted to be a lawyer, and then maybe go into politics.  I wanted to be married, have a few kids, a couple of dogs, and have lots of money.  But I knew that if I were going to be happy, I had to do what God wanted me to do.  So I started praying to God each night, asking Him to let me know.  And I heard nothing.  

So I started to go to daily Mass a few times at Lansing Catholic High School, and it was there that a stranger asked me if I were going to be a priest.  And other classmates and teachers started to do the same thing.  And before long, I started to realize that maybe God was asking me to consider a vocation to the priesthood.  I started to learn more about Catholicism, and fell in love with the Church, as one falls in love with his girlfriend.  And I decided that I wanted to give my life to serve her, just as a man decides (and hopefully the woman agrees) that he wants to give his life to serve the woman he wants to be his wife.  I applied to the seminary in my senior year through the Diocese of Lansing, and was accepted for my freshman year of college.  Each year I asked God to make it painfully clear if He didn’t want me to continue on.  And each year, I was asked to come back and continue studying to become a priest.  It wasn’t always easy; there were times where I thought (with the assistance of a rather attractive female lab partner) that maybe the priesthood wasn’t for me; but God did and has sustained me in my vocation.  God’s providential care for me has been more in the day-to-day events of life, not so much in the spectacular, like St. Peter.

But God knows what we need in responding to His call.  Some people don’t need the dramatic moments.  Some people do.  The key is that we are listening for the call of Jesus, and we respond with courage to the call of Jesus.  Because Jesus says to anyone who wants to follow Him, “Put out into deep water.”  In Latin that phrase is Duc in altum, and it was used by Pope St. John Paul II as he began his Apostolic Letter on the new millennium in 2001.  It was also a favorite of Bishop Mengeling, who told us seminarians not to dangle our toes in the water, but to put out into deep water.

Any vocational call–ordained ministry, marriage, consecrated life–and even while discerning God’s call, takes courage.  It takes faith in God, and confidence that He will show you the way.  As a priest it takes courage to serve when a very small percentage have tainted the good name of the priesthood, and it takes courage to say yes to never having a wife and a biological family of your own.  As a consecrated man or woman it takes courage to promise to not have any personal bank accounts and to be obedient to the religious congregation’s superiors.  As a married man or woman, it takes courage to commit to only being with one person in the special friendship of marriage for your entire life, to only be physically intimate with that person as long as that person lives.  Any vocation, and, again, even when trying to find out what God wants us to do, takes the courage to put out into deep waters and trust that God will not abandon us in those waters.

Many of you already have discerned your vocation here.  But some of you have not.  Be courageous in answering the Lord’s call, whatever it is, in your life.  Some of you may have spectacular calls like St. Peter.  Some of you will have more quotidian or ordinary calls like me.  But don’t be afraid to answer it.  Duc in altum!

Encountering God

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I am a planner.  And so, after I was confirmed in eighth grade, I started to think about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I was thinking about that because I was about to enter high school, and I wanted to make sure that I did well in the classes in that general field, so I could get into a good college so that I could get the job I wanted.  Because I was in a Catholic school, and had been since kindergarten, I knew that if I was going to be happy in my job, it had to be what God wanted me to do.  So I started to pray every day, asking God what He wanted me to do with my life.  I heard no answer, and was a bit frustrated that God was not answering me when I wanted.

So, once I started going to Lansing Catholic High School, I started to go to Mass on weekdays in addition to Sunday, figuring that I would force God to answer me.  One day, at Mass, the priest was a little late, and a nun, that didn’t really know that well, told me that when I became a priest, I should never be late.  In addition, friends of mine kept suggesting that I should be a priest or wondering if that’s what I wanted to do.  Though I was sure I wanted to be married, have kids, and maybe enter a profession in law, I decided to look into the priesthood, and asked priests I knew what it was like to be a priest.

I started, at that moment, to fall in love, not with a girl, but with the church.  The more I knew about her, even with her imperfections, the more I knew I wanted to serve her and dedicate my entire life to her.  I petitioned Bishop Mengeling to enter college seminary after I graduated from high school.  My love for the church continued to grow, and I continued to want to serve God’s people, especially through the sacramental life of the Church, as I progressed through seminary.  It wasn’t always easy, and there were times that I considered leaving, especially my senior year of college seminary, where I was sure the beautiful Catholic girl in my astronomy class was a sign from God that I should get married.  But the Lord helped me to see that I would be truly happy by being a priest.

I tell that story because we should all have a story to tell when it comes to our relationship with God.  It’s not just for priests or religious brothers or sisters.  Maybe it’s not a vocation story, like mine, but hopefully we all have a story of a time that God interacted with us in our lives.  Today we hear about Isaiah’s encounter with God the Father and Simon Peter’s encounter with Jesus.  Those are certainly powerful stories, with major moments that God breaks through in their lives.  But it doesn’t always happen that way.  In my own life, I have rarely had “mountaintop experiences,” and, while they do happen, for many people there are no major moments, but, rather, they see how God led them through different aspects of their life.

Mary, who was confirmed Saturday evening at Mass, has her story of what led her to the Catholic faith.  Damian, Deanna, and Jake, our catechumens, will be sent to the Rite of Election this weekend.  They have their own stories of what led them to the Catholic faith and their relationship with God.  I invite you to think about your own life of faith.  Where has God interacted with you?  Again, it may not be a big moment, but hopefully you can think of a way that God has guided you in a way you understood.  If you don’t, I encourage you to spend time in prayer with God, read the Gospels, maybe go to the Men’s or Women’s Conference in the next year, go on a retreat like Cursillo or another retreat that the Diocese of Lansing offers.  That will help you to think back on a way that God has led you, or maybe will give you your first experience of God interacting with you in your life in a way you recognize.

God calls us and interacts with us throughout our life.  May we look for the ways that God encounters us and we encounter God, and, as we find them, listen to the voice of Jesus who tells us, as he told Simon Peter, “‘Be not afraid.’”