Fishing for customer satisfactions

 "And when they had done this, they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear." (Lk 5:5)

We all want to make sense of our lives, sometimes too much so. Maybe it is something in the traditional stories we were told as children; maybe we might blame it on the Hollywood films that teach us to think of lives in complete story arcs. Whatever the cause, our minds seem to want polished narratives that make sense of our lives, and because of this, we appoint ourselves commentators on how the story is unfolding. In this way our sense of 'the will of God' and 'our vocation' can become entangled in our own attempts to make sense of our lives, rather than being triangulation points that redirect us to God's path. 

Now, this is a mistake for three reasons at least. First it is a mistake because we already know what God's will is for us: it is our sanctification, our being remade in Jesus' image, and being drawn ever more deeply into the inner life of the Trinity. Second, the problem is that in laying down a narrative - "so, that's what God was doing", we want to say - we risk trying to take control of the story, looking for signs and portents of His will. My spouse and I used to joke about our naive attempts to read the signs of God's will by calling out 'Spoons!' to each other. The thing is: spoons always fit together, whether they are meant to or not. The third mistake is that all this waiting around for God to issue us with some certifiable vocation means that we are trying to make God follow our calendar, instead of embracing the uncertainties of God's own good time; in that case, it also might mean we are missing what He is doing today.

So, what has all this to do with today's gospel? The essence of it is captured by the disciples while they were still serving as fishermen in their boats. Was that not their vocation? Was that not the will of God for them? And, there they were, after a night's fishing, facing the fruitlessness of their own efforts. Something in us wants to see successful people as having found their way, and unsuccessful people as needing to find their way. Yet maybe we need to be more detached than that. Wanting to know the bigger story - wanting a bona fide, recognizable, genuine vocation now, thank you God - can block our attention to the little details that surround us and that are full of meaning and sense. How easily we forget that the God we believe in draws meaning out of absurdity and joy out of terrible pain. He is after all the one who reaps where He has not sown, and gathers where He has not strewn. Of course we all have a vocation, but let us not behave like we can pluck it off the shelf, take it to the counter, and pay for it like a customer. Our vocation is a journey, an education and a love story; it is not a bargain, a comfort blanket or a lottery win.

What is needed then is not to turn the will of God or our vocation into an idol or a product that we hope to grasp and brandish, but rather to see them as the ways in which our life with Blessed Trinity can unfold. Then indeed, we might discover the abundance of fish that God lands in our nets daily, if only we were paying attention.