Dear Friends,

    All too often the news—and the lives of celebrities and public figures—run on headlines, scandal, and sound bites. It’s easy to stay at the surface. But every now and then, someone invites us to slow down and look at life more honestly. When that happens, it’s worth paying attention.
    Last Sunday, 60 Minutes featured a segment on 54-year-old former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. His perspective is shaped not only by public service and his Christian Faith, but by living with—and now facing death from—pancreatic cancer. From that place, the noise fades and the deeper questions remain: What really matters? What lasts? How am I living?
    The longer interview, available on YouTube, is well worth forty minutes of your time—not for politics, but for perspective.
    His reflections challenge us to resist easy answers and go deeper. For Christians, that call should sound familiar. It echoes the words of Jesus to Peter, Andrew, James, and John: “Duc in altum”—put out into the deep.
    The fishermen could have stayed near the shore. It was safer there. But Jesus called them beyond that—to trust Him in deeper water.
    That call is still there.
    In a world of quick answers, blame, anger, constant noise and violence; but we are invited to something better: to listen more carefully, to think more deeply, and to live more deliberately.
    Life is too important to skim the surface. We weren’t made for that. We were made for the deep.

Duc in altum.

Fr. John