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Let’s Go Fishing

May 25, 2017 5:42 PM | Deleted user

The Easter season always invites us to reflect on the life, learning and beginnings of the early Church. I hope each of us relates to the events written of in the Acts of the Apostles, in which Jesus, lovingly surprises His friends and is always seen inviting new people to join the adventure!

The apostles were very curious about Him, they felt both dumbfounded and hopeful because He had really risen from the dead! They had lots of questions and wanted to discuss and sort out what had happened, all as they were being moved by the Spirit to find direction and answers and form Christian community.

One message I have been meditating on is that Jesus sends messengers to the apostles, and those messengers were mostly women! These women listened with the heart and stayed well connected to Jesus, He must have known and trusted they really understood what He was saying.

There were many eye opening events for the apostles that took place at the Sea of Galilee, like Jesus calming the storm or preparing breakfast after the abundant catch of fish. Jesus participated in ordinary everyday events that created new awakening moments for those that were with Him. He wanted to be with them to share something in common. These were things they liked to do and He used the opportunity to reveal Himself or speak a special word or life changing message to them.

Jesus often expressed His desire to be with them by simply saying to Peter and others “let’s go fishing”. He was skillful at engaging people where they were at and He really enjoyed what they enjoyed doing. Then in the midst of sharing the event, they would open up to Jesus and be willing to explore more about their hopes, dreams and fears, this expanded their ideas and revealed God in their daily living. Jesus always respected people and took them just as they were, putting them at ease and letting them know in a deep way, they were understood.

As I reflect on all my wonderful years of being involved with Cursillo, I think we have so often been just like Jesus and the apostles and that we have said to each other “let’s go fishing”. Now, fishing may not be your highest priority, but we all have something that we really like doing, maybe it is shopping or sharing a walk or it might be a golf game or just telling the stories of our lives. We can be present to others and like Jesus, share these graced moments and let people be themselves and be free to respond and be present as Jesus was. We are free to tell our stories and experience these awakening, freeing moments just to be and to embrace that we are blessed.

This is the heart of evangelization that goes on with family and friends in fact, with any person we meet. This is the plan of Cursillo to prepare a team to be present to those invited into the process of enjoying what everyone has in common and be open enough to learn from each other and be led by the Spirit. For Jesus, (and us) it was, and is, simple, in fact, Jesus, in the Spirit, continues this personal invitation to each one of us.

The simple message is “let’s go fishing", this frees us from having to change people or fix them, rather, it respects and accepts people as they are, allowing them to be invited into exploring, questioning, sharing and knowing the risen Jesus, the One whom we model our life after.

Happy fishing, happy Easter season!

Fr. Martin Shallbetter


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