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“PUT OUT INTO THE DEEP”

A Reflection on Pope John Paul II’s


Apostolic Letter NOVO MILLENNIO INEUNTE
(At The Beginning of the New Millennium)
by Timothy P. Herrman, S.T.L.
June 9, 2005

INTRODUCTION

In his Gospel, Luke records that Jesus


“. . . was standing one day by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the crowd
pressing round him listening to the word of God, when he caught sight of
two boats at the water’s edge. The fishermen had left them and were
washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he
asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and taught
the crowds from the boat.
“When he had finished speaking he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep
water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon replied, ‘Master, we
worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will let
down the nets.’ And when they had done this they netted such a huge
number of fish that their nets began to tear, so they signaled to their
companions in the other boat to come and help them; when these came,
they filled both boats to the point of sinking.”
“When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying,
‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.’ For he and all his companions were
completely awestruck at the catch they had made; so also were James and
John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners. But Jesus said to
Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men. Then,
bringing their boats back to land they left everything and followed him.”
—Luke 5:1-11

The Analogy: Christ among us


This passage, as we know well, describes the call of Peter and his companions
into the service of the Word of God, our Lord, Jesus Christ. With this event, the
lives of these fishermen would change forever. They would go from being
fishermen to being fishers of men.

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This description notwithstanding, Pope John Paul II saw in this passage
something more, something that lay hidden to most, even to those who believe in
Jesus Christ. This “something more” is expressed in the phrase, “Put out into the
deep.” We see that Jesus asks them to put out into deeper water in order to bring
about a miracle. The marvelous catch of fish exhibits the authority and power of
God which Jesus possessed. The Holy Father, however, caught another level of
meaning hidden here and in his apostolic letter at the beginning of the third
millennium he shared that with us. I believe that his insight is particularly
important for us today.
Notice, if you will, that as the story opens the people had already gathered
around Jesus and they were hungry for some word of salvation. He, then, climbed
into one of the boats and asked Peter and his companions to put out “a little from
the shore” so that from this vantage point, the disciples and the crowd could more
easily gaze upon the face of Jesus and listen to His Word. Those disciples and that
crowd are us. We are the ones, who in faith and sacrament, have come from
various parts to gaze upon Jesus, and who listen to His Word. Once the Lord gives
the word of salvation to those gathered around him, He then asks Peter to put out
into the deep. In other words, the Lord is not content to leave us with just a
glimpse of Himself, or to leave us in the shallows of our faith with just a word.
Rather, He asks us to “Put out into the deep.”
“These words,” declares Pope John Paul II, “ring out for us today,”1 but what
exactly do they intone? What is “the deep” into which we are asked to go? And,
once there, what will we find? Before we answer these questions, I believe, we
must take a closer look at the context that gives rise to these questions.

The Context
These words of Jesus, “Put out into the deep,” open the letter the Holy Father
addressed to the Church on January 6th of 2001. It is the second of two apostolic
letters specifically on the third millennium. The first, as you know, was delivered
to the Church on November 14, 1994 and is called the Apostolic Letter Tertio
Millennio Adveniente or On the Coming of the Third Millennium. The first letter
was intended to prepare the Church for the Great Jubilee Year 2000 while the
second, the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte or On the Beginning of the
New Millennium, looks back over the events of the Jubilee Year and offers the Holy
Father’s perspective on what the future might bring. Before looking forward,
indeed, in order to see what lies in the future of the Church and in the life of each
1 NMI, 1.

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member of the Church, the Holy Father looks back on the events of the Jubilee
year. For him personally, this Jubilee was the goal of his pontificate and it will
undoubtedly be his legacy. Surely, this Polish Pope has exceeded all expectations,
even the expectations of those who prophesied over twenty three years ago that he
would be the one to bring the Church into the Third Millennium. Not only did he
accomplish this task but he did so with the kind of charism and exuberance that has
been the mark of truly great men and women within the Church. To enable us to
embark onto the new millennium, Pope John Paul wrote approximately 8 books, 14
encyclicals, 9 apostolic constitutions, 9 apostolic exhortations, 29 apostolic letters,
hundreds of addresses to pilgrims and specific groups, and has traveled tirelessly
around Rome, Italy, Europe and the world. Reflecting on this experience, he said of
himself:
“From the beginning of my pontificate, my thoughts had been on this Holy
Year 2000 as an important appointment. I thought of its celebration as a
providential opportunity during which the Church, thirty-five years after
the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council would examine how far she had
renewed herself, in order to be able to take up her evangelizing mission
with fresh enthusiasm.”2
Indeed, the Jubilee was for the Holy Father “an important appointment,” an
important accomplishment, but not the most important for, like the disciples of
Jesus, he understood himself to be called to “put out into the deep.”
I point to the legacy of Pope John Paul II not in order to draw attention to the
man but rather to draw attention to the Church. If Pope John Paul II was anything,
he was first and foremost a servant of the servants of God, a servant of the
Church.3 Throughout his Pontificate, his attention has been on the well-being of
the Church. So, it should come as no surprise, that when elevated to the See of
Peter, the work of the Second Vatican Council and the Church would be in the
forefront of his mind.
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council has been the watershed event and
guiding light for the Holy Father and without a doubt the most significant
2 NMI, 2.
3 Pope John Paul II’s affection for this title is evident in the opening chapter of his book
Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York, 1994), 13: “From this perspective, the expression
‘Vicar of Christ’ assumes its true meaning. More than dignity, it alludes to service. It
emphasizes the duties of the Pope in the Church, his Petrine ministry, carried out for the good of
the Church and the faithful. Saint Gregory the Great understood this perfectly when, out of all
the titles connected to the functions of the Bishop of Rome, he preferred that of Servus servorum
Dei (Servant of the Servants of God).

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movement of the Holy Spirit in our century. The Pope saw and understood his
work as an expression of the life of Christ in the Church through his Spirit. Taking
his cue from the Council, Pope John Paul II has tirelessly promoted the welfare of
the Church and has tried to help others to see this dimension of their faith more
clearly. He has exercised himself in order to help us see Christ and His Body more
clearly. “This rooting of the Church in time and space,” he believes, “mirrors the
movement of the Incarnation itself.”4

The Underlying Dynamic: the “ecclesial dimension” of our Faith


If one gets to Christ through His Body and His Body is the Church, then one
gets to Christ through the Church. Perhaps, no one in this century has drawn our
attention more to what can be called the ecclesial dimension of our faith than Pope
John Paul II. He is not alone in this task. Pope Pius XII had already drawn our
attention to the hidden significance of Christ and the Church in 1943 when he
wrote an encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ. Pope Paul VI also recognized
that this part of our life of faith remained largely unexamined, and so in 1963 he
too called all the faithful to attend to the significance of the Church in his
encyclical on the Church.5 He along with the Council desired that we see
ourselves as part of a living, breathing, organic reality called the Body of Christ,
the Church.6 It is this vision that inspired Pope John Paul II to call us to see more
deeply and intimately the future of the Church as she presses into the Third
Millennium. Just as Pope John Paul II could not move forward into the future

4 NMI. 3.
5 See his first Encyclical Ecclesiam suam, §§23-25: “Why do we have the boldness to invite
you to this act of ecclesiastical awareness? To this explicit, though interior, act of faith? Many
are the reasons, in our opinion, and they all derive from the profound and key demands of the
unique moment reached by the life of the Church. The Church needs to reflect on herself. She
needs to feel the throb of her own life. She must learn to know herself better, if she wishes to live
her own proper vocation and to offer to the world her message of brotherhood and of salvation.
She needs to experience Christ in herself, according to the words of the Apostle Paul: ‘May
Christ find a dwelling place, through faith, in your hearts’.” Cf. §18.
6 This theme is unmistakably central to the work of the Council. Consider, for example, Art.
1 of Lumen gentium: “Christ is the light of humanity; and it is, accordingly, the heart-felt desire
of this sacred Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that, by proclaiming his Gospel
to every creature, it may bring to all men that light of Christ which shines out visibly from the
Church. Since the Church, in Christ, is in the nature of a sacrament—a sign and instrument, that
is, of communion with God and of unity among all men—she here proposes, for the benefit of
the faithful and of the whole world, to set forth, as clearly as possible, and in the tradition laid
down by earlier Councils, her own nature and universal mission.”

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without looking back onto his heritage (a retrospection evident in the name he
chose to mark his Pontificate), so, too we cannot move forward without going back
and recovering our roots, the depths, the expanse that is rightly the life of faith in
the Son of God, Jesus Christ and His Body the Church.
This “going back in order to move forward” reminded the Holy Father of the
words of Jesus to Peter and his companions on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The
Lord asked Peter and his companions to go back out into the deep from which they
had just come. So, Pope John Paul II, asks us to “Put out into the deep.” “Going
back in order to move forward” has been the fundamental movement that described
and defined the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the Spirit of the Council and the
true life of the Church. It is this movement that Pope John Paul II wished to teach
us in this Apostolic Letter At The Beginning of the New Millennium so that our
faith, and the faith of the Church, might be complete. With this movement in mind,
his letter unfolds in four distinct parts.

I. MEETING CHRIST: THE LEGACY OF THE GREAT JUBILEE [§§4-15]


In the first part, the Holy Father drew our attention to the events of the past
year, the Great Jubilee Year 2000 and their significance. People, he said, flocked to
see Jesus.

“As if following the footsteps of the Saints, countless sons and daughters of the
Church have come in successive waves to Rome, to the Tombs of the Apostles,
wanting to profess their faith, confess their sins and receive the mercy that
saves.”

The Pope saw in these people the outward face of Jesus.7 Thus, he concludes his
observations saying that this year was:

1. One unceasing hymn of praise to the Trinity (§§4-5) for


“Praise ... is the point of departure for every genuine response of faith to
the revelation of God in Christ” (§4).

7 NMI, 8: “As I observed the continuous flow of pilgrims, I saw them as a kind of concrete
image of the pilgrim Church, the Church placed, as St. Augustine says, ‘amid the persecutions of
the world and the consolations of God.’ We have only been able to observe the outer face of this
unique event. Who can measure the marvels of grace wrought in human hearts? It is better to be
silent and to adore, trusting humbly in the mysterious workings of God and singing his love
without end: ‘Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo!”

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It was also
2. A journey of reconciliation (§6) He described this journey thus:
“To purify our vision for the contemplation of the mystery, this Jubilee
Year has been strongly marked by the request for forgiveness. This is true
not only for individuals, who have examined their own lives in order to ask
for mercy and gain the special gift of the indulgence, but for the entire
Church, which has decided to recall the infidelities of so many of her
children in the course of history, infidelities which have cast a shadow over
her countenance as the Bride of Christ” (§6).

It was also
3) A sign of true hope (§7)
a. Countless pilgrims “following in the footsteps of the Saints ... wanting
to profess their faith, confess their sins and receive the mercy that saves”
(§8). “We have only been able to observe the outer face of this unique
event. Who can measure the marvels of grace wrought in human hearts?
b. Young people, “an image that more than any other will live on in
memory”
c. International Eucharistic Congress
d. Particular churches
e. Ecumenical events
f. Personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land
g. Charitable works and gifts, e.g., international debt relief

4. The Heart of the Jubilee: Contemplating the face of Christ

“But if we ask what is the core of the great legacy [the Jubilee] leaves us, I
would not hesitate to describe it as the contemplation of the face of Christ:
Christ considered in his historical features and in his mystery, Christ known
through his manifold presence in the Church and in the world, and confessed as
the meaning of history and the light of life’s journey” (§15).

If at the heart of the Jubilee, we found the Church in contemplation of the face of
our Lord, then this must indicate the “programme” for the future of the Church. In
fact, this is precisely the conclusion that the Holy Father drew:

“And is it not the Church’s task to reflect the light of Christ in every historical

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period, to make his face shine also before the generations of the new
millennium? Our witness, however, would be hopelessly inadequate if we
ourselves had not first contemplated his face. The Great Jubilee has certainly
helped us to do this more deeply. At the end of the Jubilee, as we go back to
our ordinary routine, storing in our hearts the treasures of this very special
time, our gaze is more than ever firmly set on the face of the Lord.” (16)

So, the task is found in witness and this witness is an expression of the true
pastoral plan of the Church: prayer and contemplation. Contemplation is a
prerequisite to Witness as knowing precedes loving.8

“It is important however that what we propose, with the help of God, should be
profoundly rooted in contemplation and prayer. Ours is a time of continual
movement which often leads to restlessness, with the risk of ‘doing for the sake
of doing’. We must resist this temptation by trying “to be” before trying “to
do’. (§15)

What the Holy Father envisions is a “pastoral” plan which truly has Christ as its
inspiration, its measure and its end. “The mystery of Christ,” he declared, [is] “the
absolute foundation of all pastoral activity” (§15).

II. A FACE NEEDING TO BE CONTEMPLATED [§§16-28]


In the first part of the document, the Holy Father reflects on the significance of
the Jubilee as exhibited in the outer face of the faithful. In the second part, the
Pope takes us even further back into the past by focusing our attention on the
event that was the cause of our Jubilee, the person, or more especially, the face of
Jesus Christ. By focusing our attention on the face of Jesus Christ, he called to
mind the fact that our faith must be rooted in a personal, intimate and profound
dialogue with the Son of God.9 This is the type of relationship that Peter exhibited
when, seeing the scores of fish, he fell to his knees at the feet of Jesus. His
genuflection and confession was not so much a recognition of the miracle that had
just been performed but rather an acknowledgment of the person performing the
miracle. Peter discovered himself to be standing before the historical and tangible
Son of the living God. Peter’s genuflection and confession witnesses to a

8 Cf. Sacrosanctum concilium, 2.


9 This expression is used by Cardinal Ratziner and the SCDF in the document Some Aspects
of Christian Meditation (1986).

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relationship that the evangelist John would later describe in these words:

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our
hands, concerning the word of life. . . that which we have seen and heard
we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our
fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”10

Like Peter and like John, Pope John Paul II directs our attention to that person
through whose face we may have an intimate and profound dialogue with God. He
directs our attention to the people who possessed just such a relationship.
1) The Mother’s Child
2) The Carpenter’s Son
3) The Baptist’s confession, “Behold the Lamb of God”
4) Pilgrims in search of the word of salvation
5) People in search of the Bread of Life
6) The bloody face
8) The face that made hearts burn
This was the face that faith saw and contemplated. It was seen in many different
ways, under many different aspects, but only one aspect fathoms the depths that lie
hidden to our bodily eyes. Only the eyes of faith fathoms those depths. “Regardless
of how much his body was seen or touched,” said the Holy Father, “only faith
could fully enter the mystery of that face” (§19).
By putting out into the deep, Christ and the Holy Father are calling upon us to
fathom the depths of the mystery that is Christ. The boat upon which we embark is
the Church, and the deep is the mystery that is found in the face of the Son of God.
Neither can be seen or know without faith.
The more we see and understand both, the more those depths, the more we
come to understand something of ourselves and the extent of the Father’s love.
Contemplation of the face of Christ is the one programme that will never fail, and
the only programme that will secure the Church’s future.

III. STARTING AFRESH FROM CHRIST [§§29-41]


Having recalled the face of Him who stands at the center of our faith, and His
body which preserves and witnesses to this face in every generation, the Holy
Father turns our attention to the living relationship . . .
10 1 John 1:1-3.

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“. . . we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance
which he gives us: I am with you!” (29).
After contemplating the many dimensions of this face of our Redeemer, he
considers next the call of Christ, namely his universal call to holiness. “Holiness,”
he declares, “a message that convinces without the need for words, is the living
reflection of the face of Christ.” It was a miracle that opened the disciple’s eyes to
the person, but it was Christ’s holiness that convinced them to follow him. Even
later when they had abandoned Him, it was the Lord’s holiness which brought
them back and made of these poor fishermen, fishers of men. In the third part, he
calls upon us not to do something new, but to make this dimension of Christ’s
mission and call our own.

“It is not therefore a matter of inventing a ‘new programme’. The programme


already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is
the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be
known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity,
and with him transform history until its fulfilment in the heavenly Jerusalem.
This is the programme which does not change with shifts of times and cultures,
even though it takes account of time and culture for the sake of true dialogue
and effective communication. This programme for all times is our programme
for the Third Millennium.” (§29)

1. The Universal Call to Holiness


“First of all, I have no hesitation in saying that all pastoral initiatives must
be set in relation to holiness.” (30)

“It is necessary therefore to rediscover the full practical significance of


Chapter 5 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium,
dedicated to the ‘universal call to holiness’.” (30)

“The rediscovery of the Church as ‘mystery’, or as a people ‘gathered


together by the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’, was bound
to bring with it a rediscovery of the Church’s ‘holiness’, understood in the
basic sense of belonging to him who is in essence the Holy One, the ‘thrice
Holy’ (cf. Is 6:3).” (30)

a. Training in Holiness

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Fully aware of the implications of rooting a pastoral programme in the
universal call to holiness, the Holy Father accentuates the responsibility
and task of the Church in the Third Millennium.

“In fact, to place the pastoral planning under the heading of holiness is
a choice filled with consequences. It implies the conviction that, since
Baptism is a true entry into the holiness of God through incorporation
into Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, it would be a contradiction
to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a
shallow religiosity.” (31)

Holiness for all and for each

“The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high


standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian
community and of Christian families must lead in this direction. It is
also clear however that the paths to holiness are personal and call for a
genuine ‘training in holiness’, adapted to people’s needs.” (31)

b. Prayer the true means of holiness

“The training in holiness calls for a Christian life distinguished above


all in the art of prayer. . . . Prayer develops that conversation with
Christ which makes us his intimate friends: ‘Abide with me and I in
you’ (Jn 15:4). This reciprocity is the very substance and soul of the
Christian life, and the condition of all true pastoral life. Wrought in us
by the Holy Spirit, this reciprocity opens us, through Christ and in
Christ, to contemplation of the Father’s face. . . [It] is the secret of a
truly vital Christianity, which has no reason to fear the future, because
it returns continually to the sources and finds in them new life.” (32)

“It is therefore essential that education in prayer should become in


some way a key-point of all pastoral planning.” (34)

* personal prayer
* Sunday Eucharist
* Sacrament of Reconciliation

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The Primacy of Grace
Underlying this emphasis on prayer is the knowledge that in the spiritual
life, grace is primary.

“There is a temptation which perennially besets every spiritual journey


and pastoral work: that of thinking that the results depend on our ability
to act and to plan.”

Prayer reorients us to the Father and “constantly reminds us of the primacy


of Christ, and in union with him, the primacy of the interior life and of
holiness” (§38).

c. Listening to and Proclaiming the Word: Evangelization

IV. WITNESS TO LOVE [§§42-59]


Finally, in the fourth part, he asks us to allow this work of the Spirit in holiness
to shine forth in a “spirituality of communion.” The good that we are given by
being made sons and daughters of Christ, is never really received until it is given
away to others. In this way, his vision for the Church, a vision which is Christ
vision, can become our vision and the pastoral programme for the coming
millennium because it is the only programme for the Church for all time.
Through these four parts, the Holy Father brings us back into the future. He
reminds us that our future is not future if it is not solidly rooted in Christ and in His
Body, the Church. He invites us to “put out into the deep,” to take a deeper look at
ourselves as members of this Body, to see the mystery that ought to surge like
blood through our veins, to contemplate the Face of Christ.

“If we have truly contemplated the face of Christ, dear Brothers and Sisters,
our pastoral planing will necessarily be inspired by the ‘new commandment’
which he gave us: ‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ (Jn 13:34).” (§42)

We find within this command by Jesus the two-fold task of the Church’s pastoral
plan.

* The Gift: “As I have loved you”.

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“Communion is the fruit and demonstration of that love which springs from the
heart of the Eternal Father and is poured out upon us through the Holy Spirit
which Jesus gives us (cf. Rom 5:5), to make us all ‘one heart and one soul’
(Acts 4:32). (§42)

* Our Response: “Love one another”.

“It is in building this communion of love that the Church appears as


‘sacrament’, as the ‘sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of the
unity of the human race’ (LG,1). (§42)

This two-fold task has one purpose in mind: communion.


1. A Spirituality of Communion
“To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the
great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we
wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world’s deepest
yearnings.” (43)

a. To contemplate the mystery of the Trinity dwelling within us.

b. To think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of
the Mystical Body, and therefore as ‘those who are a part of me’.

c. To see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from


God.

d. To be willing to bear each other’s burdens.

The Marian Dimension


Like the Jubilee, Mary began with a message from God, angels etc. but then she
had to carry these things in her heart and contemplate them.

CONCLUSION

What lies in store for the Church in the third millennium?


Only that which was at the beginning. The third millennium will be no
different than the second if the third is not rooted in the past and specifically a past

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that involves Christ in His fullness. . .
“Christ considered in his historical features and in his mystery, Christ
known through his manifold presence in the Church and in the world, and
confessed as the meaning of history and the light of life’s journey” (§15).

What is the deep into which Christ call each of us?


The deep is a contemplation of His face.

What is it that we hope to find in the deep?


A personal, intimate, profound dialogue with God.

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