Fr. Michael Casagram – 9/3/20 – Jesus with us

Fr. Michael Casagram – 9/3/20 – Jesus with us

(1 Cor. 3:18-23; Luke 5:1-11)

+Today’s gospel shows us how Jesus uses the very circumstances of our lives to draw near to us and make them wonderfully fruitful. After preaching to the crowd, he tells Simon to put out into the deep water and lower his nets for a catch. Simon had a hard time with this because he and his partners had just done this all night long and caught nothing. We experience the same but this does not stop Jesus from using whatever work we may be doing whether in the kitchen, the Infirmary, the bakery, Liturgy, the fields, the administration of this place, to tell us to “lower our nets for a catch.’

Like Simon and his partners in the boats we feel often enough that we have worked the whole night and caught nothing. But then, if we are attentive to what Jesus is saying deep down in our hearts, aware of his presence and initiative, we too will find ourselves amazed at the great number of fish we’ll catch to where our nets are tearing and we fill both boats to the point that they are in danger of sinking.

If the love of Jesus fills us, if we realize he is right in the boat with us, our lives like that of St Gregory whom we remember today, become wonderfully fruitful even to the point where our boats are sinking.