Did You Learn to Swim by Being Thrown into the Water?

I was at a friend’s house a week or two ago. Once a year, she has a bunch of priests come over. She’s got a pool, and so we hang out all day.  Her grandson is about one year old, and she said he took these swimming lessons at one year old. I thought, really, one year old, and he can swim. She said, “Yeah, it’s crazy, though. They take the kid, and they throw the kid into the water.” I thought this is like old school. Was anybody taught how to swim like that? I’m so sorry! That’s horrible! In the old-school days, they would throw the kid in the water, and they would learn how to swim.  I watched the video of this. The person training her kid, who was six months old, took the little infant, picked him up, and threw him into the pool. I thought you’ve got to be kidding me!

The kid goes into the water, he’s under the water for maybe 5,6,7,8, 9 seconds, and he figures out how to get up; he goes like this and floats. Then the next lesson, she does it again, throws him, and he figures out a float. Then she picks him up by the legs and does a flip with him; he goes back in the water, and the same thing happens. He begins to swim, and before you know it, he floats, turns, swims a couple of times, floats, rests, and then gets to the edge of the pool. Six months old.

I was researching this to see what kind of like lessons these are, and it turns out that they’re called Infant Self Rescue. This went viral on TikTok a little while ago because the mother put this on TikTok without any explanation. People were calling around saying that she was the worst mother in the world; she got death threats and all these kinds of things from other parents. What you don’t see about that video is that there are weeks and weeks and weeks of training the child goes through, little by little, until they are ready to be thrown into the water and can swim to the side. The whole point is that the highest rate of infant mortality is drowning. The number one reason infants might die is because of drowning. That’s why mothers do that. 

I was praying with the gospel for this Sunday, thinking about Peter and the storm. You’ve got all these storms going on. The disciples are in the boat, terrified, and before you know it, they see this ghost off in the distance. They call out and realize that it’s Jesus. So, Jesus comes near, and Peter says, “Command me to come to you.” I thought that was interesting. He says, “Command me to come to you,” and so Jesus says, “Come.” Peter gets out of the boat, starts to walk on the water, is terrified because of the winds, and begins to sink. What does the Lord do? He reaches out his hand, pulls him up, then takes him back to the boat. The two of them are taken back to the boat together. 

A few things that I’d like to focus on from this is, first of all, when this happened, Jesus was in the mountains praying. He sent them off into the boat, into the water, and then he went to God the Father and spent the whole night in prayer. He probably knew what the disciples were going through because he controls everything. He probably knew they were going into this terrifying wind, rain, and terrifying experience. But he also knew that they were in the boat. Not only that, he came to them in the darkest time, when it seemed like they were in the most disarray and that he could save them.

So, first of all, I think it’s good that we realize that Jesus spent time in prayer. Even while all this was happening, he was with his father. I think the lesson we can learn from that for all of us is the primary thing that we can do in our lives now, and I tell this to married couples when they’re getting married, to children’s parents who are having their children baptized, the best thing that we can do in our life to love our families is to pray. Jesus took time away from them, went up to the mountain, and prayed. 

Maybe your children are going through difficult times; your family is going through difficult times, or your friends, it’s okay to pray. They’re going to be okay, and they’re going to be okay because of our prayer before the Father. First and foremost, when our lives are in all these storms, go and pray. The most powerful place to pray is before the Blessed Sacrament here. Jesus is present in this Tabernacle, body, blood, soul, and divinity. We can be in his presence and trust that everything else will be okay. 

The second thing is when they’re out in the sea, and it’s getting the worst it can get, called the Fourth Watch of the Night. You divide the day into four hours, into four times. The Fourth Watch of the Night is the darkest period of the night before the sun rises. That’s when Jesus came to them. In our lives, there will be times that seem very dark. In our world, there will be times that seem very dark, but when things get the darkest, Jesus will appear in our lives. Take courage that if you’re feeling any darkness in your life in your world, Jesus comes to us in the darkness.

The third and final thing is if we begin to sink because of fear and call out to him, “Lord save us,” what will he do? He will reach his hand out to us and pull us out of that. Just call out to the Lord, “Save us, Lord, save me.” 

The interesting thing is he brings Peter back to the boat. He doesn’t walk with him on the water at that point. He brings him back to the boat. The boat has always been symbolic of the church. We’re gathered here in a church, and some churches are shaped like a boat intentionally. The idea is that we face all kinds of storms, difficulties, unexpected things, terrifying things, and horrible things throughout our weeks. But every week, he brings us back to the boat. He brings us here into the church where we are safe. Over and over in our lives, if we come back to this boat every Sunday, if we come back to our Lord every Sunday, he’s teaching us little by little how to endure. He’s teaching us little by little that when we get thrown into the storms of life and sink into the water, just like that little child who learned lesson by lesson to turn his face to the top, he’s teaching us how to survive with him. 

This Sunday, as we come together, we come with that great confidence that if we call out to the Lord, he will save us. We come to him in this church where there is, at least once a week, one hour a week, a place where we are safe and with him. After Mass today, he will send you back out into the storm, and we’ll return next Sunday and regroup. I invite you to realize that prayer is so important and that we can do more in prayer than trying to fix everybody else’s life. Prayer is so important. The second is if we begin to find ourselves drowning, call out to him. The third is remembering he wants to bring us back to the boat. He wants to bring us back to the church. He wants to bring us back to the Eucharist every Sunday.