LAUNCH OUT INTO THE DEEP

A SERMON FOR THE 4TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Did you ever think that maybe God is getting a little annoyed with us?  We turn on the TV and we sit back in detached horror at the events of the world, and we wonder when God is going to wake up and sort it all out.  Well, has it occurred to you yet, that it is not God who is asleep, but the men and women he created?  How, after all, is it possible that such a small minority of troublemakers are able to cause such mayhem in our society?  How can it be that our entire civilization, our way of life built up over hundreds, thousands of years, suddenly finds itself in peril, facing a potentially existential threat from a bunch of ignorant hooligans?  Is it not, surely, that the vast silent majority is doing exactly what you and I are doing, just watching it all unfold before our very eyes, and not lifting a finger to stop it?

We know that this is all the work of Satan.  But what we tend to forget is that the only way it can happen is by the permissive will of God.  He doesn’t want it to happen, but he lets it happen.  And why?  Perhaps so that we will finally wake up and smell the coffee, not the nice smell of coffee, but the vile aroma of burnt and rancid coffee that has permeated our church, our society, and our own families. 

In today’s Gospel, our Lord stands by the Lake of Gennesaret and finds two fishing vessels moored by the side of the lake.  “But the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets.”  They had spent the night fishing and had caught nothing.  They had wasted their entire night, they were tired, they wanted to wash their nets and go home to bed.  Typical behavior for us human beings!  Their problem was the same as ours today.  Big problems, so let’s moan and groan about it and then go back to sleep.

But our Lord would have none of that.  His words were not at all what Simon Peter and the other fishermen wanted to hear: “Launch out into the deep,” he tells them, “and let down your nets for a draught.”  This was the last thing these poor tired men wanted to do.  “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing,” says Simon Peter.  Isn’t this where we find ourselves today?  We have kept the faith, tried to set a good example to others, told them about the errors of Vatican II and the importance of keeping the commandments.  We’ve marched in pro-life rallies, voted in elections, complained to bishops and popes, and exhausted ourselves trying to raise our families to at least just go to Mass on Sundays.  And now we’re tired.  It’s time, think we, to sit back and take a rest.  And like the future apostles in today’s Gospel, the last thing we want to hear is to get off our backsides and “launch out into the deep” again.

It’s going to take some kind of incentive to get us moving.  To give us the same enthusiasm we used to have when we were younger, when problems were still “manageable.”  And so God has permitted a threat to appear on our horizon.  One that we can no longer ignore.  We can’t just expect somebody else to deal with it because, quite frankly, nobody is.  The time has come, my friends, for us to launch out once more into the deep.  “Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more,” as Shakespeare’s Henry V exhorted his troops as they marched to battle against the French. For us, though, it’s no longer just a local battle between the good guys and those French rascals.  This time, we have a Luciferian movement of global proportions, making this a world war between heaven and hell, good and evil.

When we’re faced with an army of Frenchmen, our weapons are obvious.  We shoot them with our arrows, and poke them with our swords.  But when the enemy army is comprised of demonic legions, we must use other weapons.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Judas the Betrayer came to hand over our Lord to the Romans, St. Peter took out the sword.  Bad choice.  Cutting people’s ears off is not going to help our cause any more than it prevented the Crucifixion.  Our weapon must be supernatural.  We must prayer.  Pray the Rosary, go to Mass, receive the Sacraments!  We must remain firmly in the state of grace.  We must grow in virtue.  These are no longer pious exhortations just for our own benefit.  They are literally our only available weapons right now against the enemy. “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,” said our Lord; “but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”  This is the attack we are under today, and it’s time to decide just whose side we are on.  It’s time to take up arms—spiritual arms—to defend ourselves, our families, and the very core of the society this nation represents.

We may be afraid today.  But let’s remember D-Day, the boys on those amphibious troop carriers as they approached the beaches of Normandy.  They were afraid too.  But they didn’t run away from the battle.  On the contrary, they ran full steam ahead towards it, as we must do now.   In today’s Epistle, St. Paul describes how “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.  Even we ourselves groan within ourselves.” Fine.  Moan and groan away.  But then don’t go to sleep.  Go to battle.  Launch out into the deep and don’t stop till we have retaken the land occupied by the enemy.  “This land is our land!”  Not Satan’s! 

And if we take the trouble to fight, the end result of our fighting is assured.  As St. Paul points out, we are simply awaiting “the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”  If we’re looking for that final redemption, then we must love God, love our neighbor.  And there are times when that means we have to go to battle for our neighbor, our nation, our family, ourselves.  If you don’t want to, if you prefer to go back to sleep and let others do your work, then “all ashore that’s going ashore.”  Good bye.  For the rest of us, it’s time to launch out into the deep.