5th Sunday of the Year. C.

A strange thing happens to a priest when he is appointed to a new parish. It happened to me in 1980 when I went to Sanquhar, Kirkconnel and New Cumnock. It happened to me again in 1985 when I went to St Matthew’s in Kilmarnock. And it happened to me a few months ago when I was appointed here to West Kilbride. It is, I think, the nearest I could ever come as a priest to feeling what parents feel when a child is born. The baby is a complete stranger to them. They have never met him or her before. And yet, as soon as the child is born, they fall in love with it. They want everything that’s best for it. The baby becomes the focus of their attention and they dream of what he or she will become one day. They want their son or daughter to be everything they are capable of being, a feeling which comes from deep inside themselves and is almost a pain or an ache. And without being sentimental in any way about it, that’s how I feel about you. Since the day Bishop Cunningham asked me to come here I have felt that ache. In a very real sense, I have loved you and wanted so many things for you, a feeling which has increased rather than diminished in the intervening months.

But what is it that I want? What are these dreams I have for you? Well there’s a sentence in John’s Gospel which expresses this far better than I ever could and it’s when Jesus, speaking to the Samaritan woman about all the things that have happened in her life, says this to her: ‘If only you knew what it is that God is offering you.’ Today is Catholic Education Sunday. But in fact the word Catholic here is superfluous in that the education we are speaking about here is a life-long process the purpose of which, from a faith perspective, is to come to know what it is that God is offering, what it is to be a human being, and clearly this is for every person. And what God is offering is something truly mind-blowing and beyond our understanding. He has such dreams for us, so many things he wants to share with us, and as I have listened over the years to people like that woman at the well, talking about their lives, the longing for them to come to know what it is that God is offering them has often been almost physically painful. And with young people in particular, the focus of attention this weekend in parishes throughout Scotland, the pain is even more intense. Born into a world they did not create, a world filled with so many things which militate against their spiritual growth – like the materialism of our age and the shallow, empty, superficial consumer-driven culture that goes with it – I have found myself, time and time again when with young people crying out silently within myself those same words. ‘If only you knew what it is that God is offering you.’ And that, in the end, is what education is about. In the long run - I think it was the great economist John Maynard Keynes who said it - we are all dead. And it’s only when we see our Catholic Schools from the perspective of eternity that we can cut through all the politics that surround them in Scotland today and see that what they are really about is enabling our young people to begin to glimpse what it is that God is offering them and how much he values them. And if they only knew this, what an amazing difference it would make to their lives.

But, of course, the same is true of us and if we are to come to that same knowledge then, in some form or another, we all have to make the same journey Peter made in today’s Gospel. And the first thing Jesus tells him to do once he has got into his boat – in other words, once he has established the beginnings of a relationship with Peter – is push out a little from the shore. If we are to know what it is that God is offering us, then, as I suggested last week, we cannot just keep doing what we have always done. What used to be is not good enough. Something has to change. In some kind of a way, we, too, have to leave the safety and security of what we have always known and push out a little from the shore. And I invite you to take time this weekend to ask yourself what pushing out from the shore might mean for you at this moment in your life. It will be something quite simple. But if we are to know what it is that God is offering us then standing forever at the edge of the water, afraid or unwilling to take that first step, is not an option.

Having pushed out a little from the shore, however, Jesus then tells Peter to put out into deep water and pay out his nets. This is a much more serious and radical step to take and sometimes many years can pass before we are ready for it. Pushing out a little from the shore was one thing. Peter could understand that. But he was an experienced fisherman who had fished all night long and caught nothing and what Jesus was asking him to do made no sense to him as a fisherman. But he did what he was asked and was completely overcome by what happened. And so it is with faith. To launch out into deep water is to step out of our comfort zone, move beyond what makes sense to us and go where God leads. It often means turning human thinking on its head, but if we trust God enough to do it the results will astonish us too. To begin to glimpse what it is God is offering is to have the whole way we see the world transformed. It’s like moving from black and white to colour. It’s like being blind and suddenly being able to see.. It’s to find a depth of meaning in our lives previously undreamt of. It is, in effect, to begin to see the world as it really is for the first time and to live life as it was always meant to be lived.

But it starts with that pushing out a little from the shore. It means taking a chance on God. It means doing something we have not done before. And for some of you at least, putting your name down for the Week of Prayer at the beginning of March, might be the place to start.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Jesus’ words to the Samaritan Woman, ‘If only you knew what it is that God is offering’ are addressed to every human being who has ever lived. If only we knew the sheer depth of God’s love for us it would transform the way we see everything. And so we ask God to lead us slowly but surely from the empty world of religion into the rich, deep, satisfying but profoundly challenging world of faith and so open up our minds and hearts to the fullness of truth about who God is....................Lord hear us

If there is a God who loves the world, and if that God’s deepest desire is to share his life with us, not only after death, but now, as we make our way through life, then to live our whole lives and never know that love – never at least glimpse what it is that God is offering - has to be one of the saddest things that can happen to a human being. And so we pray for the world of our time that, having understandably rejected the God of religion, it will now discover the God of faith.........Lord hear us

It can take many years to come to know God. Mature, personal faith is not possible until mid-life. All we can do, therefore, with our young people is work with them to lay the foundations of adult faith and make sure that these foundations are strong and as free as they can be from distorted ideas that will prove an obstacle to healthy growth in the future. And so we ask God to be with the teachers and pupils of our schools and guide them as they engage in this important but challenging process.............Lord hear us

If we are to begin to glimpse what it is that God is offering then we must be prepared to push out a little from the shore. This is not as easy as it sounds. For many in the Church today it means letting go of ideas and ways of thinking which have been with us since childhood and which we cling to like a child with a favourite toy. But history does not stand still. The Church has moved on, and we pray for the courage we need to push out a little from the shore and move on with it..........Lord hear us

To put out into deep waters can only happen after we have pushed out a little from the shore. It means moving into an unfamiliar place where things are not what they used to be. What was important to us once is no longer so. Things that we took for granted in the past no longer seem so obvious. Our values change as God leads us beyond human logic and begins to teach us to see the world and its people as he himself sees them. And so we ask for the grace to be open to this change...........Lord hear us

Peter and his companions, completely overcome by the catch they had made, left everything and followed Jesus. In the first reading, the young Isaiah, in reply to God’s question ‘Whom shall I send’ answers, ‘Here I am, send me.’ And so we ask God to raise up from our Schools today many young people ready to answer God’s call to be witnesses to the Gospel and bearers of good news to the world of our time, who will become the foundations of a Church fit for the age in which we live................Lord hear us.