SPAIN, mda. In his pastoral projection for the month of July 2014, the Director of the Schoenstatt Movement in Spain, Father Carlos Padilla, offers the Schoenstatt Family of Spain and the readers of our schoenstatt.org webpage, an important and actual motivation at the service of life and of the Jubilee pilgrimage – exactly 100 days from October 18, 2014. His starting point is the Jubilee gift from the Schoenstatt Family of Spain to form a web of living shrines, a web of life, a missionary web. On the way to 2014, this month’s pastoral projection is dedicated to lowering the nets into the deep waters.
Let us build that web of living Shrines which we want to give to Mary in her Jubilee Year. In this month we want to lower the nets into the deep waters. Often this idea has a negative connotation. The net binds us, it complicates our life, it involves us without our permission. To lower the nets seems somewhat invasive, excessive. It is like wanting to catch others for one’s own cause. We do not want to be tied up, that is the truth. We want to be free and decide for ourselves what is convenient for us, what we like. But we do not stay there because the net is a place of encounter, heart in which we rest in one another. And, at the same time, a place of mission and surrender. Not a net to tie others up, but to take to many the treasure of the Shrine and the Covenant of Love with Mary.
Jesus asks Peter and his disciples to lower the nets: “Jesus said to Simon: – Push the boat out further to the deep water, and you and your partners let down your nets for a catch.” They trust, they obey and they place themselves at his service. It is moving to see that impetuous heart of Peter yielding before the word of Jesus: “By your word, I will lower the nets.” . Peter believes in his work, in his desire. The disciples, because they love Jesus, trust, in spite of the fact that they have been fishing all night without catching anything. Now, exhausted, they go against their own criteria and trust in the criteria of Jesus. The net is lifted full of fish. They can hardly carry it. They have trusted and the net is full. The net is a sign of fruitfulness. A net filled with fish, with life. A net full of hope. They believe in what Jesus can do with his Yes. Often, the only thing Jesus needs is our Yes. He does not want our valuable talents. He does not care so much for our capabilities. He only wants obedience. He wants my net. Sometimes our net is torn. We lack the strength to lower it and even moreso to take it out of the water. We do not trust in the success of the undertaking and we falter in our trust. Sometimes it may be that we have no desire to fish. Today we renew our Yes.
What does it mean to row into the deep water and to lower our nets? The scene speaks to us of being confident in our way of life. Sometimes we are restless, searching our way, the place where we will be fulfilled and happy, obsessed with achieving employment, a home, a vocation which will permit us to be fulfilled as persons. We forget that our true vocation is to walk with Jesus, to follow his steps into the deep water wherever He wants to take us. This is a suggestive and enlightening image…..to navigate with Him into the deep water. How unimportant then are tiredness, doubts or fears! Into the deep water is something simple when He is the one who is in the boat. Therefore, we trust. Our vocation is to live in Him, with Him, for Him. We may fail in some of our undertakings. We may not find our perfect place in Schoenstatt. We may even lose the place we had and think that we will never have peace. But today, Jesus invites us to dream at his side, with Him, in Him. Yes, in his boat, we trust in his word and we row into the deep water.
But not only that. Jesus asks us to lower the nets into the sea. . The sea is immense. The harvest, the world are immense. It frightens us to think about it. Everything is so vast. We could do many things. The Christian is not one obliged in convincing others of the goodness of the Kingdom of Christ. He does not lower the nets to convince everyone of the truth of the Gospel. The Christian is one in love with life and with God. His love leads him to want to give life and hope. His love becomes unselfish and joyful service. His love does not remain still, it moves. To fish is not an obligation, but a desire. It responds to the desire of the heart. The desire is to give it all. Pope Francis said: “ a ‘simple administration’ is no longer useful to us, let us build ourselves in all regions of the earth in a ‘permanent state of mission’ “ [1]. A Church which is not missionary loses its essence. A Church tired of going out to fish becomes bourgeois and ill. Father Kentenich said:“In the great religious orders, they endeavor to cultivate the awareness of the mission they have and the awareness of having been chosen for that mission with the aim of not becoming stagnant in the memory of a glorious past.” [2]. Not lowering the nets speaks to us of a Christian who is no longer in love with life. We do not lower the nets to convince others, but to give freely what we have received freely. What we assume as a gift, we give as a gift , it is our task. We care that the man of today has life, hope, the desire to love and to live. When we give the Shrine and the Covenant of Love as our great gift, we do it convinced of the precious gift given to us. There is nothing more valuable. One day we discovered that home in the heart of Mary and, therefore, we cannot cease lowering the nets. Not to fish, as we say vulgarly, but to give the hidden treasure in the depth of the heart of Mary, in the depth of the Shrine, of our own heart.
[1] Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin Amerrica and the Caribbean, Document of Aparecida (June 29, 2007), 201
[2] J. Kentenich, Kentenich Reader III
From the same author: 100 years of Schoenstatt. Also as E-Book or printed book.
Original Spanish: Translation: Carlos Cantú, Schoenstatt Family Federation, La Feria, Texas USA 08042014
