Jesus meets people where they are at. The crowds are longing for meaning, for something more than what life and their experience of institutional religion were giving them. They crowd around him, hanging on his every word. He speaks with an authority of the heart. He encounters ordinary people, fishermen. He invites ordinary people to encounter him and his radical vision for humanity.

Mysteriously Simon responds. Simon trusts, weak feeble trust – but still trust. Jesus invites them to ‘put out into the deep!’ Simon, in a moment of craziness that makes no logical sense responds with trust. In the midst of this feeble trust God gifts Simon and his companions far beyond their imaginings.

This powerful calling of the first disciples is food for our hearts this day. Jesus calls ordinary people, in the ordinary circumstances of life. Don’t go looking for lightning bolts or to be thrown from your horse as happened to Paul on his way to Damascus. Listen to Christ whispering to your heart. Trust that whispering with your feeble faith and feeble trust just as Simon did.

Yes, we are sinners, like Simon. Get over it! Christ does his best work through our weakness and our weak faith and trust. We are all called to be instruments of the Reign of God within our world. We are called to be Christ’s hands, eyes, ears, feet and heart for a world longing for meaning. But we do not walk alone.

Today and every day, hear Christ’s words ringing in your spirit like a mantra, ‘Do not be afraid!’ He walks beside us and lives within us!

by Br Damien Price cfc