New Beginnings

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - December 3, 2004

With the first Sunday of Advent, the Church begins a new liturgical year and the Anchor, not missing a beat, inaugurates a new column.

I'm grateful to Monsignor Moore for the confidence he has shown in me by encouraging me to begin this feature. I hope that what I write will live up to that confidence and be worthy of your eyes and time.

Advent provides an appropriate template for what I hope to do with these weekly columns.

There are two principle movements in Advent. The first is Christ's coming toward us, in the past (Bethlehem), in the future (at the end of time) and in the present (through the Church, sacraments, grace, Sacred Scripture, ordinary life and even through a newspaper). The second movement is our going out to meet him. Like the wise young women in the Gospel, we recognize the appropriate action of requited love: "The Bridegroom is coming; Let us go out to meet him!" (Mt 25:5).

These two movements — Christ's action and our response — are, when you come right down to it, the most interesting and important events in a person's life. Often, however, they do not get much attention. I hope with this column to make a small contribution to changing that.

The column as a whole will take its name from one momentous intersection of Christ's action and a person's reaction in faith.

One morning at the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus borrowed a fisherman's boat for a sedentary pulpit. After he was done preaching, he told the owner, "Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch" (Lk 5:4).

That was a strange imperative to come from a carpenter to an expert on that sea. Fish were, after all, caught in shallow water during darkness, not in deep water during daylight. Moreover, the fishermen were exhausted and frustrated after a long, empty night's work.

But at the Master's word, the fishermen put out again and the catch overwhelmed both their nets and their boats. Then Jesus told the owner, Simon Peter, something even more startling. Despite his sinfulness, from that point forward, Peter would be a fisher of men.

Trusting in the Master's word, he would again put out into the deep water— even at times when it might have seemed futile, even when he was fatigued and frustrated. Because of those efforts, each of us was eventually caught and brought into his boat.

That instruction to Peter, "Put out into the deep," was chosen by the fisherman's 264th successor as the motto for the Church not just in our lifetime but for the third Christian millennium. Pope John Paul II finds in the encounter of Christ and Peter the paradigm for the encounter of Christ and every disciple today, wherein Christ asks us to trust in him, despite our unworthiness, as he sends us out as fishers of our contemporaries.

The Holy Father writes in his apostolic letter to end the Jubilee Year, "Duc in altum! ('Put out into the deep!'). These words ring out for us today… We must look ahead, we must "put out into the deep", trusting in Christ's words.… On that occasion, it was Peter who spoke the word of faith: 'At your word I will let down the nets.' As this millennium begins, allow the Successor of Peter to invite the whole Church to make this act of faith."

"Putting into the deep" is a response to that invitation.

I'm happy that this title quite nicely fits into the "nautical" theme of this Catholic newspaper, with its "Anchor," "Steering Points" and "Moorings."

I also hope that the title will symbolize an attempt to get "beneath the surface" of various current events in the Church and in the world.

But most of all, I hope that it will be a vessel from which various evangelical fishing expeditions may be attempted.

Christ still comes. Christ still calls. Let's lower the nets.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.