Limitation to Invitation to Abundance

Master, we have worked hard all night and caught nothing, but at your command, I will lower the nets.

I do not know if this has happened to you,

when you work on something and you put in all the work,

but it does not pan out, it does not work out.

It can be very frustrating.

You do everything right, get everything lined up,

and it does not come out according to plan.

Many times it has happened to me.

I look up at the Lord, I raise up my hand and say,

“Look, Lord, I have done my part. It is time for you to step up.”

It is one of those moments where you want it all to work.

But you know, sometimes it is outside of your control

and you push up against your own limitations.

You can hear that sense of frustration in today’s gospel with Peter.

Now, bear this in mind,

Peter has been working hard all night with his friends,

he says they were up all night and caught absolutely nothing.

Then here comes along Jesus.

Now remember, Jesus is a carpenter

and he is telling the fishermen what to do.

You can see how outrageous this sounds.

So you can imagine what Peter is feeling, “Like really ?”

You can hear him saying internally,

“Put out again? Really!

I have been working hard and I know my job.

I know this Sea of Galilee pretty well

and I have been doing this fishing thing a while.”

In Peter, we can sense there is faith in Jesus

yet there is doubt too.

We do not know whether it was something

that Jesus had said before that inspired him,

or whether it was something Jesus did

that he had witnessed that had convinced him.

But there was enough faith in Jesus that he said,

“I have worked hard all night.”

He acknowledges the reality of his limitations,

that it has not worked out,

but that he still accepts and moves beyond his doubt into faith.

He trusts him, you can see it.

There is this movement from limitation to invitation.

In that movement the Lord is asking Simon to trust in him,

to look beyond his limitation and to trust in his providence.

We are called to do this as well.

This movement from limitation to invitation is critical.

And it is hard because our limitation is upfront for us to see.

That might be a personal limitation and

we have some frustration where we have reached our own limits.

Whether that be skills or whether that be opportunities

or maybe it is some suffering that has taken place in our own life

or extended families that we do not know

and we have reached our limits.

We can not take anymore.

It is just too much.

And the Lord is inviting us out of the limitation

into his mercy and into his love.

It is hard, that movement in between limitation to invitation

or a movement from doubt to faith is the movement of discipleship.

I had a recent sort of example of this.

As many of you know, I had my hearing tested recently.

I found out that I have 55% loss of hearing in both ears

and that I needed to get hearing aids.

It is hard to move beyond that line

because you have to admit that you need hearing aids.

We need help, that we are now limited.

And that is hard to accept.

Now, I am not even 60 and I am going like,

“Oh my Lord. Like, are you meant to help me here,

come on, help me out.”

It is hard, it is a real limitation,

But in that in between faith and doubt

and struggle and limitation

that we have to accept that invitation.

This week I put in my hearing aids for the first time.

You can not really see them, but they are there

and I can hear everything now.

I can even hear you think!

This week I heard something I have not heard in decades.

I did not even know I was missing it

because I had forgotten it.

It was the sound of chirping birds.

I have not heard it in decades

because it is outside the range that I have lost.

It was so shocking when I started hearing them.

I was like, “Oh my gosh! Holy, comoly, you guys are loud.”

They were chirping everywhere!

I walk the same path every day and nothing has changed.

It is just that now I could hear,

I could hear those little birds.

I can also hear the squirrels that my dog goes after.

Now I hear them, I say, “Oh, I know where they are going.”

I had to accept the limitation

and then through the gift of doctors and technology,

I am now able to restore my hearing,

to be able to hear things I have not heard in years.

In that I see a movement.

I am also called to not just hear birds,

but to hear the Lord, to go deeper.

To put out into deep water and to hear the Lord

call me to a deeper trust of my limitations in my life

and our own limitations as a community.  

That we are called to push through those limitations

and allow the Lord to lead us to

where we may not think we can be.

Now, there is a second movement in this gospel that is super important.

That is when the Lord tells them to put out in the deep

and they put out in the deep,

they do not just get a catch,

they get a super abundant catch.

So much so that it fills their boat and the boat of their friends.

So here is how the Lord works in our lives.

Not only does he promise us abundance,

but he promises super abundance.

He promised not only to give to our needs,

but to those that are even greater.

The gift that is given to Peter was not just given to him alone,

it was given to be shared with all of them.

Peter instinctually called his friends

and they share in this super abundance.

See if we can accept our limitations

and accept the invitation to trust in the Lord.

Then we move into that super abundance of the Lord

not only provides for us,

but out of abundance supplies for us to share as well.

This weekend we launch the annual diocesan appeal.

The bishop has called us to share our resources.

The temptation for us is to say,

“Hey, you know, we have done our part.

I give to the church, I do this.”

That is true. We do.

You are generous and it is fantastic.

But what we do not know is

that we are called to share the super abundance.

We are abundantly blessed at St. Simon,

more so than almost any other parish in the diocese.

We have beautiful buildings

and we have generous volunteers

and generous parishioners with their time, talent, and treasure.

But the bishop is inviting us to go beyond that

and to share his super abundance with others in need.

Bear in mind this is not collected for him.

It is collected to help run the whole diocese,

to help minister to those who are not able to reach that abundance,

to care for those other parishes that cannot care for themselves.

Also we need to care for our future needs

like the education of seminarians for future priests

or the education of catechists in English, in Spanish and in Vietnamese.

So we can reach all those people who are coming to our churches

through the Institute for Leadership in Ministry (ILM)

and many other programs, which the bishop cannot do without our help.

The temptation is as our goal keeps on going up every year

because well, we are doing so well as a parish.

And so we are asked to step up and we are asked to help,

to do that out of our abundance.

But we do something even more as a parish

because we have committed that everything above our goal

will go to one parish in our diocese, Christ the King,

who is deeply in need.

We have been doing this for several years, as you know.

And last year we were able to give them over a $100,000

because you were so generous.

At Christ the King, Father Hector has nine masses on weekends

in three languages.

Currently, Father Hector is being treated for leukemia

and he is doing well.

He and one other priest are the only priests there.

The reason we have chosen his parish is

because he is an incredibly hard worker

and he ministers to three different communities,

English, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

It is extraordinary. 

By the way, Fr. Hector is a father and a grandfather.

When his wife died, he went into the seminary and became a priest.

He works this hard for the community

and it is just so inspiring.

I am personally inspired by his story

and his willingness to work so hard.

I am asking you to support us in this annual diocesan appeal

to give to the rest of the diocese,

but in a special way to give extra so that Christ the King can have it.

Because we do not keep any of it, we give it all to them. Why?

Because we have been abundantly blessed,

because we have accepted the invitation

and we know that the Lord has given us more than what we need.

And we are called to share it with the greater community.

This week, the temptation is to get that envelope in the mail,

to look and put it aside.  

I ask you please do not put it aside.

Pull it out today and sign up for whatever you can.

If you can do the same as last year or a little bit more, that is great.

If you have not given before,

I ask you to please consider doing it

because the Lord has given you this invitation

to move beyond your doubt into abundance.

In whatever ways you do, I thank you for that gift.

But most important of all,

we are called to listen to the Lord in our own lives.

Not just the chirping of the birds.

We are called to listen deeper and

to put out in the deep and to allow the Lord

to call us beyond our limitations and to accept his invitation to trust.

That is what Stephanie and Grant are going to do now

in a few minutes when we baptize little Max Rome.

And in that they are trusting.

So we are called to trust. I ask you to consider

now in your own mind and heart and to listen to Peter’s call.

Master, we have worked hard all night and caught nothing,

but at your command, I will lower the nets.