My vessel (self) and its innermost seabed
One of the hardest and most important endeavors in life is the journey into the depths of oneself. To uncover what is within the soul and to excavate all of the unclaimed emotional debris, face it, fix it and detox it.
For this soul of ours shall stand one day before God!
Indeed no words have resonated ever so truly than those spoken by the Lord Jesus who said “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?” (Mark 8:36)
Most people find it hard to carry out such a tough task.
A task of introspection and going into the deep end of their soul. Thus one ends up escaping the whole journey of introspection altogether and continues the entire life on the shallow shores of existence without ever discovering what is within one’s self that affects their behavior and their outlook on life.
The vesper’s gospel of Thomas Sunday has the story of the lord Jesus embarking into the fishing boat of the apostle Peter. And from this powerful story, we can reflect upon the following:
Jesus enters Peter’s boat and commands him to launch into the deep end. Peter trustingly did so and brought Jesus deep. This symbolizes allowing Jesus to enter the deep end of our souls.
Peter then casts the net only out of faith in Christ’s words, and he collects a lot of fish. Only then he felt a sense of being vulnerable and self-conscious and to that, he shouted saying: “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man…”
Yet Jesus looked upon him with all the love and gentleness and said to him “Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men”
Jesus is the only One who is capable of entering into the depths of our souls excavating “out of the eater something to eat, and out of the strong something sweet.”
He alone with the power of His Divinity can turn death into resurrection even after four days of festering that follows the mortal body of a dead Lazarus.
He looked at the innermost depths of his beloved Peter and said to him: any old deep wounding of any sort shall heal, and any old sins shall be forgiven, and
any deeply buried ugliness or pains shall turn into glories.
When Peter obeyed the calling of Jesus to enter with him into the depths, he personally experienced the Divine work of the Lord with him and made him feel shattered in his sinful state of weakness, he cried out saying “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man…”
We don’t know how the Lord Christ turned Peter from the inside out.
Let us think of what He was able to do to earn Peter’s sense of being validated and to recruit him away from being just another fisherman to a career shift. He made him a fisher of people, an apostle, and finally a great martyr for Him.
It could have all started with that one moment when Christ reminded him of His mission for us: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed (St. Luke 4:18)
It must have at the moment that Peter realized the power of His divinity and trusted Him to embark into the deeper end of the vessel of his existence trusting him to take full charge of it as he reiterated later that “We have left everything and followed you”
Peter must have resisted the thoughts that could have potentially pulled him away from his discipleship to Christ when he later said “ To whom could we possibly go Lord whilst eternal life is with You”
Those among us who carry afflictions in the innermost deep waters of our souls, those with crushed deep wounding who continue to groan from the hurt of the past, the near impossibility of the present, and the anxieties of the future are encouraged to start trusting the Savior of our souls and comply to His calling to “enter into the depths”