Holy Persistence

The 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Readings: Isa 6: 1-8; Ps 138; 1 Cor 15: 1-11; Lk 5: 1-11

We all have those days when nothing seems to go right. I think Simon-Peter was having one of those days in today’s gospel episode. He spent the whole day and night fishing without any luck. He was tired and discouraged to the extreme when he steered his boat back to shore… and then had to go through all the work of cleaning up his vessel and nets.

I wonder what was going through his mind as a professional fisherman when his friend, Jesus, came to him and said, “Simon, take your boat back out into the deep waters and lower your nets for a catch.” Jesus wasn’t even a fisherman—yet here he was telling Simon how to run his business.

You’ve got to feel for poor Simon. Come on, we’ve all been there. You do your best. You work hard. But the results are zero—in a relationship, with a project at work, in the kitchen at home. And if frustration sets in, that seems to jinx things even more: the harder you try, the less you produce. You finally get to the place where all your wisdom tells you: just give up.

When you reach that point—and I speak from personal experience!—about the last thing you want to hear are the words, “Try harder!”

Automatically you want to snap back, “It won’t do any good. We’ve worked all night and we haven’t caught anything. What’s the point?”

Let’s talk for a little bit about this sense of frustration… disappointment… this failure.

In the overall scheme of things, having a bad day at work or school is no big deal. There’s always tomorrow…

But for lots of us, even minor setbacks can throw us into an emotional tailspin. We may become very disheartened and depressed. It’s as though there is a bitter emptiness in our soul. And then a deeper fear sets in. We try so hard to avoid failure that we wind up avoiding all risk. Life becomes dull and miserable—a first-class rut.

Fortunately for Simon-Peter, Jesus came along and challenged him.

Sometimes, we all need to listen to another point of view.

Sometimes, we need to risk one more failure—to go and do what our common sense tells us cannot be done, and to try what we know will not work.

Sometimes, we just need to head out into the deep waters and let down our nets for no better reason than Jesus asks us to.

Our Lord—and I don’t know how he managed to keep from chuckling to himself, since of course he knew what was going to happen—had to have been greatly amused to see Simon’s reaction at his whopping catch of fish.

And Simon—well, he recognized immediately that God’s power was at work here. He also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever Jesus asked of him, he would be able to do it. That’s precisely why we hear that as soon as Simon got his boat back to shore, he and his partners James and John left everything and followed him.

Funny, isn’t it? In the midst of an ordinary day—in fact, about the most rotten day imaginable—three regular guys… normal working stiffs… found God, overcame their fear of failure, and discovered their life’s work. Pretty amazing!

I bet you never knew that failure and disappointment could be so exciting!

But that’s just the point: with Jesus Christ at your side, you can conquer your fears and turn your losses into gains. Remember how Ann Landers used to say it? When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

I know some of you are probably watching American Idol on TV. In the matter of just a few short months, some total unknown is going to wind up a musical superstar. But that meteoric rise to success is so unheard of that it’s just as miraculous as winning a lottery jackpot.

I was reading the other day about country music star, Randy Travis, who’s up for a Grammy Award next week. When Randy burst onto the music scene several years ago, some people called him an “overnight success.” Actually, his wife, who’s also Randy’s business manager, laughs at this. She said it took ten full years for him to be discovered. During that decade, she sold her jewelry and pooled all her cash to keep her nightclub open long enough for someone to discover what she had discovered: the voice of Randy Travis. For ten long and lonely years, she promoted Travis while he fried catfish, washed dishes and sang in the nightclub. Then it finally clicked. He had a hit song, followed by an album contract, an offer for a tour and even a movie deal. Such was his “overnight” success! Actually, Randy Travis made it faster than most musicians. According to a University of Chicago research team, the average time it takes for a professional musician to “make it big” is 17 years and 2 months. Jesus says: Hang in there.

Another little story: during the California gold rush, there were two brothers who sold everything they had and went prospecting. They discovered a gold vein, staked a claim, and proceeded to get down to the serious business of getting the gold ore out of the mine. At first, everything went really well, but then a strange thing happened. The vein of gold simply disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there. The brothers continued to pick away, but without any success. Finally, they gave up in disgust.

They sold their equipment and claim rights for a few hundred dollars and took the train back home. Now, the man who bought the claim hired an engineer to examine the rock strata of the mine. The engineer advised him to continue digging in the same spot where the former owners had left off. And three feet deeper, the new owner struck gold.

A little more persistence and the two brothers would have been millionaires!

Again, Jesus is telling us the exact same thing he told Simon-Peter:

There’s gold in you, too! Can’t you dig three feet more?