“Fishers of Men” – the Desire of Father John Vogl
Funeral Homily for Father John Vogl, Priest of the Diocese of Yakima, April 13, 2026
Job 19:1, 23-27a; 2 Timothy 2:11-12a; Luke 5:1-11
Most Reverend Joseph J. Tyson, Bishop of Yakima
“Fishers of men.” That’s the phrase in the Gospel of St. Luke that Jesus uses to describe his disciples. And I believe that may be the phrase that animated Father John Vogl in his vocation as a priest.
“Fishers of men!” Father Vogl loved to fish. I have a framed picture he gave me some years back. It’s a picture of a fish he caught. I looked at the photo and teasingly asked if he’d photoshopped it!
But there is nothing photoshopped in our Gospel from St. Luke! Jesus is on the lake of Gennesaret. He sees the fishermen cleaning the nets. He asks them to put out a bit farther from the shore. Simon Peter tells him they have toiled all night and caught nothing. But out of unexplained instinct these fishermen follow the command of this still unknown Jesus. They reset the nets, and fish emerge to the breaking point. At this point Simon Peter – overwhelmed by what only could be a miracle – begs Jesus to stay away: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8b)
What’s so amazing is Jesus responds to this cry of unworthiness by stating succinctly that now he and his fishing crew will be “fishers of men.”
The lesson could not be more dramatic for them and for us. God does not choose the worthy. God makes worthy those he calls. If our call to priesthood depended on our feelings of worthiness, then none of us would climb out from underneath our bed covers.
Father John Vogl had an instinct that his priesthood didn’t depend on “worthiness” and that the sacraments of the Church didn’t depend on either the worthiness of the priest or the worthiness of the people he served. They – and we – depend on God.
He knew in a way many of us will never fully understand the deep brokenness of the world. He was a soldier in the army in Mogadishu, having left right before the killing of his fellow soldier in 1993. The event was made famous by the movie “Blackhawk Down.” But despite his military experiences, Father John Vogl never considered himself a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. As a result, he connected well with his military brothers who he considered were worse off than him. And he perhaps most touched his own humanity through fishing. I suspect the tranquility of fishing with the camaraderie of brother fishermen helped him stay close to his call to be fishers of men, even with his own human frailties.
Preparing for a different homily a few months back, I found myself rereading the famous novella by Montana writer Norman Maclean titled “A River Runs Through It.” The novel became famous in the early 1990s through a movie with the same name directed by Robert Redford.
It tells the story of a Presbyterian minister and his two sons. Both sons grow up flyfishing Montana’s Big Fork River with their father. Both sons become writers, growing out of their exposure to their father’s care for the Word of God in Sunday preaching. One becomes an English professor and marries into a stable life. The other uses his crafted language skills as a journalist. The journalist son drinks hard and plays hard. He dies in a bar fight.
His father – a very holy and upright Presbyterian minister – struggles to understand how he and his wife could bring forth two talented sons, two talented wordsmiths, two talented fishermen and yet see them experience two very different and dramatic ends. There is no explanation offered to him – or to us. It’s a mystery. But we have a hint in the way Jesus first calls the rough-and- tumble fishermen as his first disciples. What ties the call of the disciples together in all four gospels is ultimately this: God does choose the worthy but make worthy those he calls.
I began this homily with an image that you will see online of Father John Vogl’s beautiful rainbow trout, caught and released outside Ketchum, Idaho on the Big Wood River in 2014. I close with these poetic words of Norman Maclean describing his own experience of fishing on the Big Blackfoot River in western Montana:
“Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.
“Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
“I am haunted by waters.”
Funeral Homily for Father John Vogl, Priest of the Diocese of Yakima