The happiest and most fulfilling times in my life have been those times when I had put out into the deep and dared. My disappointments and regrets have been those times when I did not dare, kept very close to the shore and stayed at some safe haven.
Barely in my teens and without prodding from any one, except the inspiring talk by a Sacred Heart missionary priest, I decided to leave home and entered the seminary. This was the start of a lifelong journey that has brought me to places I never dreamed of I would see and visit and met people whom I had never imagined I would encounter and much less interact with. At times, I wonder how much more exciting and fulfilling the journey would have been if I had dared a little bit more.
I has set my mind to becoming a priest and if I had just stayed the course, I could have been one. It was a safe and sure route. Just let the years go by and when the time came I would have been ordained. But both internal personal disquiet and external social ferment conspired to push me out into the depths once more. I lost all moorings, all the people and places that gave a sense of everything being right with the world. I remember waking up in the middle of the night several times during those times, crying from the uncertainty and the turmoil going on within me. But looking back, I am glad I had let out into the deep and trusted the Lord to lead me on.
And so I have learned that the journey of my life is about letting out into the deep and trusting that the Lord will be there to guide me and to tell me where and when to cast out my nets. It was thus when I decided to marry, to have children, to change career, to take on more responsibilities, to move to a foreign land. And thus, it will be for the rest of the journey. I do not know what else lies in store, what shores I still will visit, what events will push me to let go of my moorings again and put out into the deep once more. Peter’s words will be my prayer: ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.
Luke 5:1-11