Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

Duc in altum – put out into the deep! Jesus’ sole mis­sion con­sisted and still con­sists in teach­ing people the right way to wor­ship God; how to relate with one anoth­er; how to relate with the entire cre­ation; how to live a bet­ter and ful­filled life; how to man­age author­ity; how to build a happy and suc­cess­ful fam­ily; how to attract God’s bless­ing; what to do to avoid God’s anger; how to inter­pret and actu­al­ize the law; how to obtain sal­va­tion and etern­al life; and so many oth­er things. Jesus trans­forms every place into a classroom. He knew the crowd were really like sheep without hon­est and pre­pared shep­herd, hence, he tries to fill the gaps in their lives with and through his excep­tion­al and spir­it-filled teach­ings, often rejec­ted by those in authority.

Put out into the deep

“When he had fin­ished speak­ing, he said to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Mas­ter, we toiled all night and took noth­ing! But at your word I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:4–5). Peter and his com­pan­ions have toiled the whole night, but could not make any catch. Jesus ignored them and star­ted teach­ing. It was after the teach­ing that he ordered Peter and his com­pan­ion to put out his net into the deep water, that is, to lower his net for a catch. If we were to be Jesus, we would have acted dif­fer­ently. We would have spec­u­lated on why Peter and his com­pan­ions could not make any catch. But Jesus ignored him and star­ted teach­ing. What did Jesus teach the crowd, Peter and his companions?

Conclusion

This Sunday Gos­pel offers us the oppor­tun­ity to re-exam­ine what we do, how we do it and why we do it. As the psalm­ist says, unless the Lord builds the house, labour­ers labour in vain and unless God watches the city, in vain do watch­men stay awake (cf. Ps 127:1). Let us learn to labour with God, in God and for God. Duc in altum means aim high, go deep­er. It is an invit­a­tion to avoid super­fi­ci­al­ity. Peter and his com­pan­ions toiled the whole night without catch­ing any fish. In like man­ner, many reli­gious lead­ers espe­cially Chris­ti­an lead­ers toil every day without mak­ing any impact on any soul because they rely on their mere human capa­city. Although they make effort, but the effort they make is per­son­al and selfish effort aimed only at enrich­ing them­selves. To catch fish, Peter must listen to Jesus and put his net into deep water and in the right dir­ec­tion. Sim­il­arly, to win people for God, Chris­ti­an lead­ers must aban­don selfish­ness and greed for mater­i­al accu­mu­la­tion and listen to Jesus. They must start think­ing about the people instead of think­ing about themselves.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 5^th Sunday of the year © is found in vol. III pages 106–116. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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