Fourth Sunday in Lent, cycle C

 

Luke 15:1 - 3, 11 - 32

I think the parable of the prodigal son continues to intrigue us two thousand years later because we all know people like the sons. In fact, to be honest, we probably identify with one or the other. I identify with the older son. I grew up being the oldest in my family. While I didn't have to work for my father on his farm, I felt a sense of responsibility toward my sisters; I felt like I had to be the peacemaker between my mother and father, who hardly let a week go by without some kind of verbal conflict ending in cold silence. I felt most of all that I had to make them proud by getting good grades, by achieving my eagle scout badge in Boy Scouts, by striving, always striving, to be the best that I could be. This isn’t a healthy way to live, by the way, because as soon as you achieve one thing you look around for another mountain to climb, and this goes on long after your parents have passed away. Now fortunately I did not have a younger brother like the one in the parable. But I knew people like that. When it came time for my high school class to move on to college, or learn a trade or get a job, one of them, a guy who was a few years younger than his older sister, whose parents were pretty wealthy, decided to take a gap year, before that became popular. Pete went off to Las Angeles and lived off his dad’s money for a while. I don’t know if he ever had a job. The last time I saw him was at our 25th class reunion, and he was still in Las Angeles living with another guy and pretty much enjoying the surfing lifestyle.

And deep down I sort of resented it. How could he be so irresponsible? Why wasn’t he trying to make something of himself? Even though it was none of my business, it bothered me.

So, when I read this parable, I side with the older son. This is not a story about repentance, to me. It’s about a dad who indulges his younger son whom he has failed as a father. And it never stops. The kid asks for his share of the estate, and that means selling land and livestock so that it can be turned into cash. He goes off with his dad's blessing and blows all that money on having a good time. He gets so down and out that he has no place to turn, so then he decides to come home. Not because he wants forgiveness; listen to him. “Dad’s got money. I'll go home and pretend I’m sorry. He’s a soft touch and I’m his favorite. I’ll call him ‘father’ and just watch, the old boy’s heart will melt.” And he does that, and the father’s heart melts, and the fatted pig is killed, and robes and rings are put on, and a great party is thrown.

And the older brother comes home and finds out what is going on. And the dad comes out and reminds his son that everything he has is his, what’s the big deal? Come in and celebrate, your brother is home, he’s alive, isn’t that great?” And I sympathize. The older son might very well have said, “It’s not great. I know I have everything, but what is lacking is your love. You kill the pig for the kid, and you haven’t ever offered to throw a party for me and my friends.”

And that’s where we leave the story. The older brother and his dad are standing outside the party, unable to see the point being made by each other.

Now I’m sure a lot of us have identified with the younger son; we’ve recognized our sinfulness and we are so grateful that God's mercy is so great, so accessible in the sacrament of Penance. But remember, the younger son never expressed sorrow or a desire for forgiveness; he was just at the end of his rope and hungry and had nowhere else to go. I have a feeling that most churchgoers are more like the older son -- we are doing our duty, we are people that get the job done, both here and at home and at work. You can count on us. The people who are like the younger son aren’t here. They are at a movie or out to supper or sleeping in on Sunday morning. They haven’t a care in the world but will turn up when things start going sideways. And those of us who are older sons can’t help but resent that a little bit.

I don’t see the dad in this story as standing in for God. I see a dad who takes his older son for granted and indulges his younger son. In a way, the dad is the reason they are that way. The older son lives to get his dad’s attention and approval; the dad, on the other hand, has spoiled and continues to spoil the younger son.

So what can we take away from this story? I think the clue is to remember who Jesus is talking to. They are the leaders of the people, who wonder why he eats with tax collectors and sinners. And maybe he wants them to see that they are the older son, and the sinners are the younger son, and rather than shun the sinner, they have to make the first move, they have to go into the house and welcome the younger brother, because nothing will change unless that happens. Jesus came to build a world where self-giving love was the norm, but we have a world where we shut out people we regard as sinners. During Lent let us see the older brother in our own hearts, and look for a younger brother to begin the process of reconciliation, even if he doesn’t want that right now.

Third Sunday of Lent, cycle C

Luke 13:1 - 9

Why is there a war going on in Ukraine?  I’d sure like to know and apparently so would everyone else.  If you go on the internet you can find all kinds of people speculating as to why Putin chose this moment to invade Ukraine.  Maybe he’s crazy.  Maybe he senses that our president and the leaders of European countries won’t put up much resistance.  Maybe it’s a matter of stubborn pride now -- if he turns back without accomplishing something big, he will have caused all this trouble, especially to his own country, for nothing. A few small voices seem to suggest that Putin is paranoid and doesn't want a NATO country on his doorstep.  And I’m sure if you lived in Russia you would hear a lot of justification for what is happening, and you might have no way to find out the truth.  But the bottom line is that every time there is disaster we are programmed like computers to look for a reason.

And that’s the gospel today.  Some people come to Jesus with headline news.  Pilate killed a bunch of Galileans.  Those people in Siloam died when their tower collapsed.  And perhaps they asked Jesus, or perhaps he knew what they were going to ask -- why did all this happen?  It must have been sin, right?  Because sinners get what they deserve.  

We aren’t much different twenty centuries later.  We aren’t so quick to blame disaster on sin, but we still look for reasons, for excuses.  If someone loses a loved one, we tell them he’s in a better place.  If someone loses his job, we remind him that God is in charge and something will come along.  We think we are consoling but we are just filling in the blanks giving speculative answers to the question, “why do bad things happen -- to good people, to bad people, to you , to me.”  

When you look at this gospel passage, it’s a little hard to see how the second part relates to the first.  Jesus tells the messengers that those people who suffered disaster are no more sinful than we are, and we better repent before it’s too late.  To uis “repent” means to be sorry for our sins, and maybe that’s what Jesus meant.  But another meaning for repent is to change one’s mind, to ask a better question, perhaps -- and I think that makes more sense as a prelude to the parable he tells.  Because if you look at the parable, you see two reactions to something bad.  The fig tree does not bear fruit.  Cut it down, says the person who owns the tree.  It won't bear fruit, what good is it?  The fig tree not bearing fruit isn’t much of a disaster, is it?  But it’s the same kind of response that is so natural to all of us.  We identify a problem and almost in the same breath identify a reason for that problem. In this situation the owner of the tree sees that the tree isn’t bearing fruit, concludes that it is sterile, and orders it cut down.  But the gardener sees an entirely different situation.  The tree is alive, perhaps with some nurturing it can be made to bear fruit.  And he is willing to get his hands dirty, to work with the tree, to invest some time and effort.

And we can draw some conclusions from the story.  God is like the gardener, sure.  He is the God of second chances.  And third ones and more.  He never gives up on us; Salvation and eternal life are ours to lose.  God is not the tree’s owner, he’s the gardener.  

But another lesson has to do with what we do when our minds automatically look for reasons for bad things that happen -- to us, to our neighbor.  And when we ask why and come up with an answer, perhaps that is just a waste of our time, but more importantly, perhaps it puts up a barrier to appropriate action.  If my friend experiences a loss, maybe the right response is to grieve with him, to enter into his pain.  Perhaps when a war happens, the right response is how I can be a peacemaker; how I can relieve suffering.  Because trying to figure out why is a waste of time and blocks further action.  So whether it’s a fig tree, personal loss, or something like a war, the question is not “why” but rather, where can I do something to begin to change things for the better.  That’s repentance, that’s the changing of one's thinking.  

So next time you feel yourself asking why, recognize it as a prompting from the Holy Spirit; don't ask why, ask where you can help, how can you make the situation better, how can you bring about the kingdom of God, which you have the power to do because you belong to Christ, and in the end Christ will triumph over all evil.  

Second Sunday in Lent, cycle C

Luke 9: 29 - 36

When I was a kid we took cowboys very seriously.  Of course we didn’t mean those guys out there actually working with cattle; that wasn’t very romantic at all.  We meant Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy -- heroes all, who never missed when they shot their six-gun s and who also never actually killed anybody with their guns.  Usually the bad guy would have his gun shot out of his hand, without actually seriously injuring the hand.  And the  cowboys we loved all had side-kicks, the most famous of which was Tonto, the faithful Indian friend of the Lone Ranger. Tonto always wore brown buckskin clothing that covered his arms and legs, in contrast to the Indian villains who never wore shirts.  

We learned about cowboys from the movies and comic books.  No TV in those days.  But we also heard radio shows, where we would hear voices and sound effects and use our imaginations.  

And us kids all had cowboy outfits -- the hat, the bandana, the filigreed shirt, and of course the six-gun which used a roll of caps to make the proper sound.  Today if you were a kid like that you would be doing cultural appropriation, exhibiting toxic masculinity, and holding an unacceptable opinion about the right to bear arms.  But I do have a point.

In Luke’s gospel, at the time of Jesus’ baptism he himself hears a voice saying “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”.  No one else hears this. But on the mountain of transfiguration, the voice from the heavens says, “this is my beloved son, listen to him”.  The three apostles, gazing at the transfigured Jesus clothed in dazzling white garments and appearing in glory, heard the voice of the Father.  But they heard the voice as they witnessed the real Jesus who appeared changed, almost like a being from another planet, or maybe from heaven itself.  

And moments later, things were all back to normal.  Jesus was his old self, wearing his regular clothes, walking around in dusty sandals -- from a distance you couldn’t pick him out of a crowd.  He certainly wasn’t wearing a white tunic with a red cloak nor did he have light rays shooting out from his heart.  There’s a long-running show you can watch on your cell phone and other places called “The Chosen” which I think gives a much more realistic picture of Jesus.

The early Christians formed communities and developed ritual practices and took up the sacraments that Jesus had left, and thought a lot about the life of Jesus, his passion, death and resurrection.  The results of the first hundred years of this effort make up our New Testament.  All those writings, including the gospels, came out of active Crhistian communities and reflect how those communities thought about their faith, theri relationship with God and with each other.  And one overriding idea was that Jesus had become a man so that we would have a relationship with God something like his own.  He did tell us, after all, that he was going to prepare a place for us because in his Father’s house were many mansions.  He said that his mother and brothers and sisters were those who hear the word of God and keep it.  But being sons and daughters of the Father doesn’t just mean a new relationship.  It means a fundamental change in you and I, a change that comes about in Baptism.  And that’s what the apostles saw on the mountain of the transfiguration -- the real Jesus, yes, but the real you and I as sons and daughters of the same Father.  And the apostles who witnessed this told others, and three of the gospels try to describe it.  The Gospel of John alludes to it, when it says that “we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father”.  

When my friends and I played cowboys and indians we were really trying to be something we weren’t; but when we pretended we changed a little, because we could imagine ourselves being brave and upstanding, defending the weak, challenging the bad guys.  And perhaps that’s why we get a glimpse of the transfiguration -- we don’t have to pretend, we are like that, we look like that to our Father in heaven, and we are capable of so much more than we even know.  So pray that God will reveal to you what he wants from you, and pray that you will know that you are the beloved, in whom he is well pleased.

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 6:39 - 45

During my medical education, there was a saying -- and I suppose it’s still a saying -- “See one, do one, teach one.”  Medical education is a lot of book learning, but there is a lot of practical stuff as well.  And the only way to learn the practical stuff is to watch someone else do something, try it yourself until you can do it without much thought; then teach it to someone else.  In fact, when you teach something to someone else, it reinforces your own knowledge of what you tried to teach..  And it doesn’t just apply to medicine.  I was reminded of this the other day when the turn signal in my car stopped working.  I knew it needed a new light bulb, but I had never replaced this on this particular car.  The manual wasn’t much help.  So I found a youtube video that showed me how to do it.  I’m not a quick study, so I would go in the house and watch the you tube for a minute, then go out to the car and try to do what I watched.  Over the course of a half hour or so I managed to change the bulb.  I was so proud of myself, and I had gotten a lot of exercise going back and forth between the car and my computer.

You and I are the sum total of seeing and doing; from the time we are infants we model our behavior on others.  But we often forget that we are, by necessity, models for other  people.  It’s kind of flattering to see yourself reflected in other people.  I remember during the last couple of years that I was in practice, a phrase I had never heard before became widely used in the Baystate culture.  “At the end of the day” was shorthand for “after we take into account everything, this is my conclusion”.  The phrase was first used by people who held a high rank in the hospital culture, and before you knew it you began to hear it in conversations all through the hospital.  

Today Jesus makes a number of straightforward statements that it’s hard to disagree with. A blind person leading a blind person?  That’s a recipe for disaster.  Can a disciple surpass his teacher?  Jesus means that you can’t learn more than your teacher can teach you.  Who could disagree?  And it’s good advice to make sure you can see before helping your brother see.  Good trees bear good fruit; bad trees bad fruit.  Simple statements.  But here it is in the gospel, straight from Jesus’ lips.  What’s the point?

I think it’s this.  “See one, do one, and teach one” is the saying.  We have to be conscious of the fact that our behavior is being watched; people around us will pick up on how we act, what we do - and incorporate some of that into their own personalities.  

But it works in the other direction as well.  Some of those vibrations that we cast off and that others pick up on push away rather than attract..  If I see someone who appears angry all the time, or depressed, or humorless, I might not pick up on something good about that person that would aid my own spiritual growth.    

We can’t help learning from each other; and what we learn best is non-verbal.  Jesus could have simply instructed his disciples to serve each other, but he acted this out at the last supper when he washed their feet.  And while we are rightfully concerned about our own spiritual health, we need to take a positive interest in the spiritual health of those who watch us -- especially people close to us like our children, our spouses, our best friends.  

Saint Paul said to the Corinthians, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”  He was conscious of the fact that he was teaching by example as well as words, but also that if his followers imitated him, they would be on the right track, because he knew he imitated Christ.  

Lent is coming.  It’s a good time to take stock of our spiritual lives and what we need to do to draw closer to Jesus.  And it’s also good to ask, who among our friends and associates is influenced by my behavior?  And likewise, who do I  imitate?  Because our ultimate goal is to imitate Christ and to live in such a way that others who see us will be influenced to be more like Jesus.  During Lent make a resolution to learn more about Jesus so that you can model your own behavior more completely on him.  

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

In today’s gospel we hear Jesus continuing to instruct his disciples.  And what he is telling them is as countercultural today as it was in his time.  It’s almost as though he is saying, “Pay attention to how you feel when somebody does something to you, and then do just the opposite.”. That’s definitely not the way of the world.  So what gives?

When you read through the gospels, Jesus frequently mentions the “kingdom of Heaven” or “the Kingdom of God”.  Most of us think he’s talking about life after death, when we will live in the heavenly Jerusalem where everything will finally be perfect, where we will contemplate the vision of God for all eternity.  Jesus, of course, came to earth to make a pathway for us to come into union with God, to destroy death, to allow us to live forever.  But we don’t have to wait till we die to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  He gives us very plain instructions, which everyone can understand.  And that’s the scary part.  I can understand what Jesus is telling me, but putting it into practice is really hard.  

Most of us who try to be disciples congratulate ourselves if we manage to avoid serious sin.  When we have that act of penance at the beginning of the Mass when Father tells us to “call to mind our sins” I bet you didn’t call to mind even one.  He caught me off guard also.  It takes some time to remember the last time I committed an official sin.  As long as I stay out of trouble and keep my nose clean, I’ll be alright.  

But what if our examination of conscience consisted of those things Jesus talks about?  When did I last “love” an enemy, or do good to someone who hates me?  .Some of the things he talks about are more situational, and i’m not sure how I would react if someone cursed me -- probably I wouldn’t do much, but I probably wouldn’t bless them.  But Jesus is laying out a way of life which has captured the imagination of some really great people, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Junior.  And, of course, all those brothers and sisters of ours that we call saints.  Following Jesus’ instructions is the only way to change the world for the better.  

In the early days of the Civil Rights movement in this country I remember a story.  In 1971 there was a lot of violence in Durham, North Carolina, as the city attempted to comply with mandatory integration of the schools.  The city fathers appointed a Black activist, Ann Atwater, to chair a commission on how to make integration safer.  They also appointed a man named Clairborne Ellis as her co-chair, who was also the head of the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan.  I suspect this was an attempt to sabotage the whole process.  The commission set out to interview the stakeholders, and one group came in from a local Black church and started the meeting with a rousing hymn.  As Ann Atwater was clapping along, she noticed Clairborne was not, so she got up and took his hands and clapped them along with the music.  That was the beginning of a life-long friendship, and Clairborne eventually quit the KKK and joined Atwater in campaigning for civil rights.  At Clairborne’s funeral his family made sure that Atwater was present.  By then most of Clairborne’s extended family had not only dis-associated with the segregationists but had also been involved in extending civil rights.

This story, and there are many others like it in which enemies became friends because of a simple, countercultural act on the part of one of them, is the sort of thing Jesus is talking about.  Of course there is risk when this way of living is tried.  You might end up being a martyr or losing your job or your home.  But if you’ve truly brought the kingdom of God closer to reality by your action, you have nothing to worry about.  Jesus promises that Your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

As you know, we are about to begin a synodal process in our diocese.  It doesn’t involve bringing a Black activist and a ku klux klansman together, but there is a similarity.  In the process we are about to embark upon, there will be opportunities for you to listen and speak to others about the Church; you will have a chance to step out of your comfort zone and engage with others over the very real tissue of thinking about our Church and what you personally would like to see in the future.  We can choose to keep our heads down and go on with our lives, or we can do what Jesus says:  Give and gifts will be given to you, a good measure , packed together, shakedown, and overflowing will be poured into your lap.  For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured it to you.  

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 6:17, 20-26

Most of us are familiar with the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus gives us the eight beatitudes.  You remember, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” These are recorded in teh gospel of Matthew, where the writer has Jesus go up on a mountain and sit down. He wants us to see that Jesus is like Moses, bringing us a new set of guidelines by which to live.  And sitting to give a speech was a sign of authority to the Jewish people; We still do this when the Pope delivers a serious message -- He speaks from a chair, “ex cathedra”. And so when we hear Luke’s version, as we just did, we probably think of these statements in the same way -- in fact, people call this discourse Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain.  But perhaps that’s an indication that Jesus is doing something very different here.  At the beginning of the gospel, it tells us that Jesus stood on a stretch of level ground, with his disciples in the middle of a great crowd, including gentiles, because Tyre and Sidon were both regions inhabited by them.  Luke, who is probably a gentile and is writing to gentiles, portrays Jesus as a teacher in the Greek world.  These teachers would gather their disciples in an agora, which is Greek for field, or flat place, and teach standing up.  But these differences aside, Jesus’ gives us only four blesseds and four woes.  

“Blessed are you poor”, he says, not “poor in spirit”.  Saint Augustine said that he is not holding up physical poverty as an ideal, although certainly Saint Francis did.  Augustine said that Jesus meant us to have a humble attitude towards God, to be faithful, and to do good with what has been given to us.  Similarly, blessed are you who are now hungry” speaks to our awareness of the need for God in our lives.  Blessed are you who weep does not mean being depressed or sad; it means you are aware of injustice to the point where it hurts to think about it.  Blessed are you when people hate you on account of the Son of Man.  I think about people who day after day are there praying in front of the abortion clinic.  These attitudes that Jesus lays out need to be cultivated; they aren’t automatic.  But they are important, because Jesus promises that the day will come when these longings in us will be satisfied, and we will see that having gone through the work of putting God first, of longing for God above everything else, of being hurt by the injustice around us, of accepting the subtle and sometimes obvious hostility toward us when we act for Christ -- there will be a great reward.

Jesus goes on to warn us of the four sources of sin; the pursuit of material goods, the pursuit of comfort, pleasure, good things to eat and drink; the pursuit of amusement and distraction; and taking delight in the honors the world gives.  Jesus knows that all of these are sources of distraction from what we should be doing, and they blunt those spiritual impulses that lead us to union with God.  And we forget that we are mortal, that someday we will die, and none of these things will matter.  Jesus points out that any and all these sources of sin will be seen as empty and worthless someday; We will suffer the fate of the false prophets in the Old Testament.

So when we think about these beatitudes, we can see that life is a sort of balancing act.  We have four things that seem to push us away and four that seem to attract us.  And our job as Christians is to see in the woes the things that our dangerous to our spiritual lives; and in the blesseds, those things that bring us closer to God, which of necessity means cultivating a true poverty, a true hunger, a true sense of the evil around us and indeed, in us; and the willingness to put yourselves out for Christ.  

Lent, of course, is for these things.  We deny ourselves something, so we are in solidarity with the poor; we fast, so we can see beyond the good things we give our bodies; we remember Christ’s suffering in the Stations of the Cross, in the Passion narratives we will hear, and we recall the injustice all around us; and we are marked with ashes for all  to see, which is a tiny step but does mark each of us as as one of Jesus Christ’s disciples. In these beatitudes and woes, Jesus invites us to measure ourselves and see what we are lacking; and holding out to us the promise that if we step out with courage even when it’s hard, we have his rock solid promise that we will be rewarded in heaven.  

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

 Luke 5:1 - 11

My dad was an ardent fisherman, something he had in common with my grandfather.  Until my grandfather developed lung problems from smoking, the two of them would go out in the very early morning and spend most of the day fishing.  I remember my dad proudly bring hime two or sometimes three nice fat brook trout which my mother would fry up for supper.  There were also times when he brought home nothing.  My dad tried to get me interested in fishing.  I’ll never forget the first time -- I think I was about six or seven.  He got me out of bed at 4 in the morning on a Saturday.  I dozed in the back seat of the car until we finally reached the little Bighorn river.  He gave me my new fishing pole and put a worm on the hook and told me that I was sitting near a good fishing hole and he would go up the river to another one.  He promptly disappeared in the early morning mist and I felt pretty abandoned, hoping that I would not get eaten by a bear and also that I would not be confronted with a fish.  It seemed like several hours whent buy and he finally returned and we went home.  I must have made a fuss because he didn’t ask me to go fishing again for a few years.  I never became an avid fisherman. 

Peter and his partners didn’t fish in mountain streams for recreation.  For them fishing was hard, backgreaking work.  You went out onto the lake in a large round boat.  You and your partners threw a very heavy net over toe side and as it sank you pulled on ropes to get the net to close around whatever it caught; you pulled the net back on the boat and sorted out whether there was anything worth keeping; and this went on as long as you could put up with it.  And when you got back to shore you would go over the net repairing tears and cleaning it up, and you would clean your fish and set them out to dry over a fire.  And sometimes you didn’t catch anything.

Peter and his partners were at the end of a bad day.  I’m sure all they wanted at that point was to go home and rest up.  But that’s when Jesus entered their lives, at least in the story that Luke tells.  And Jesus takes over.  I wonder what was going through Peter’s mind.  I’m sure he didn’t think he could learn anything about fishing from this wandering preacher who had been teaching the crowd.  Maybe he agreed to try one more time because of the people who were watching from shore.  Whatever the reason, the result was an overwhelming catch of fish.  

I suspect most people who go to Mass on Sunday have been involved at some point in their lives in ministry.  Maybe teaching faith formation, maybe belonging to a service organization; maybe just helping out once in a while -- I see some people staying after the last Mass on Sunday morning who just tidy up the church.  And for those who don’t do forma minstry, I’m sure that there are times when one’s faith pushes you to do something you’d rather not.  We all know that faith is not just belief, but it is action based on belief.  

But we get tired; we try something and fail; we make great plans and see that things don’t change much.  Several years ago our diocese launched a major effort to revise the parish council system.  There were workshops and publications and practice sessions.  I remember that in Saint Mary’s we spent a lot of time learning about this.  This was true of other parishes as well.  All that effort came to nothing.  Parish councils have not really changed from before n terms of impact, structure, or utility.  This sort of thing is reflected in the secular world as well.  I went through three such attempts at re-aligning everything while I worked at Baystate.  These were all interesting and we hoped, promising, but things settled back into the original groove eventually.  

Saint Peter and his partners had done everything they knew how to do to catch fish and put food on the table for their families.  And they failed.  And Jesus came along and rescued the whole sad situation.  And that’s something we can take away from this story in the scriptures.  When we step out to change things, we always start out by doing what we think will work, what we think is the best way to procede.  And when we fail, we feel like giving up.  And that’s when the Lord offers his help.  That’s when we need to pray, to look around and see what he is telling us to do, to listen to the Holy Spirit.  That’s when we need to put out into deep water and lower our nets, expecting that He will show us the way.  We see the success of so many saints who operated in this way.  Mather Angelica, the founder of EWTN, seemed to live a charmed life, with someone coming to rescue her over and over again when she was up against the wall.  And she expected that.  We celebrated the feast of Saint John Bosco this last week.  He died at the end of the 1800’s, having established an educational system for the poorest of the children, and an order to carry on his work -- all because he left things in God’s hands.  Read about your favorite saint and you will see that their successes were usually from allowing Jesus to lead.  

So on this fifth sunday of ordinary time let’s resolve to put out again into the deep and lower our nets - and let the Lord work through us, which is when success is going to take place.