"When he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, 'Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.' And Simon answered, 'Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.' And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish." (Luke 4:4-6)

Taking our cue from Pope John Paul II in his latest Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte (At the Beginning of the New Millennium), we will focus on these words of Jesus as the theme for our Prayer Meeting talks and small group discussions this spring.

What does Jesus mean by these words? On one level, he is teaching Simon Peter something about catching fish-a lesson meant to apply to Peter's future role as a fisher of men. It is not Peter's own strenuous toil or his fishing expertise that is going to land him a catch-it is obedience to the Master. Jesus knows where the fish are! For us, that means that if we want to be effective witnesses for Christ, helping other people to come to a living knowledge of him, we need first and foremost to listen intently to Jesus and find out from him where to focus our efforts. We also must be willing to "go deeper," to extend our activity and our expectancy further than we might have previously imagined. There is a great shoal of fish waiting to be caught in the Third Millennium, and Jesus is calling us all to be fishers of men!

On another level, we can understand Jesus' words as applying to the new life in the Spirit. The Lord is calling us to "put out into the deep"; that is, to enter more deeply into the divine LIFE he has bestowed on us. He is calling us to deepen our prayer, our Scripture meditation, our participation in the Sacraments, our fellowship with one another, so that we can experience more fully the power of his grace in our daily life. In order to do that, we have to be willing to get further away from the security of the shallow water that we are used to. There may even be storms that come up in the deep. But we need never be afraid, since Jesus is always with us in the boat.

These two meanings are actually closely linked. The more deeply we are immersed in the life of God, the more we will be able to attract others to Jesus. The more willing we are to move out of our comfort zone and obey the Master, the more he himself will be able to act in and through us to draw others to himself. As John Paul II points out, "the men and women of our own day-often perhaps unconsciously-ask believers not only to 'speak' of Christ, but in a certain sense to 'show' him to them" (Novo Millennio, 16). What better way to make the face of Christ shine before others than to let him shine in our own hearts with all his glory!

So, let us seek to "put out into the deep" in both the more interior sense (reflecting on topics such as death to self and life to God, being conformed to Christ, living the covenant, etc.), and the more exterior sense (evangelization, exercising prophecy and the other spiritual gifts, serving the poor, etc.).