On June 8, 2024 a fishing trio rescued 38 dogs from drowning in Mississippi Lake. Three men were going to fish on a motorboat in Mississippi Lake when they spotted what appeared to be a head bobbing in the water nearby. “What is that out in the water?” one of them asked. “I think those are dogs!” the other answered.
They headed in that direction, and soon it became clear that there were numerous heads in the water and they all belonged to hound dogs. “There were dogs everywhere” one of them said in an interview talking about the bizarre scene, and he continued “they were kind of swimming in circles and did not know which way to go.”
They pulled the boat up to each dog and grabbed as many as they could. They brought some aboard and boated them back to shore. They needed to make two more trips to rescue the total of 38 lost dogs that had numbers painted on their sides.
Finally, the rescuers found out what happened. These dogs were in a fox hunting competition, and at a certain point another animal passed between them and the fox. Instead of continuing to chase the fox, the dogs started following the other animal and ended up plunging into the lake. When they were in the middle of the lake, they got lost and did not know where the shore was; they did not know which way to go and started swimming in circles, and little by little got exhausted.
In our life something similar could happen. We all follow our goal, which should be: salvation, eternal life, infinite Goodness, holiness, in short, God. However, many times in our lives another goal could come up and we could get distracted by that fake goal and start following it. Doing this, we could also end up plunging into the waters of sin, and drown.
Just like these dogs we need help to get out of the lake of sin. First of all, we need the help of grace, because without grace we cannot leave sin. We also need the help of the “apostles” or “God’s messengers” which are those people that God puts around us to help us, (like the fishermen in the story), those who give us good advice, the ministers of the sacraments who administer God’s grace, those who try to help us to get back on the right path, etc.
The dogs could have been aggressive or started barking or biting the fishermen, but they allowed them to help and so were saved. Sometimes we do not accept the help that God sends to us. This happens when we want to follow our own will, when we feel comfortable in the middle of the lake of sin and do not realize that we are about to drown, etc. It is very important for us to pay attention to God when he talks to us directly or indirectly, through the messengers He sends.
Another important teaching from this story comes from the fact that most likely the first dogs were the ones who started following the other animal, and those in the back followed them. That also can happen to us when we start to follow others who are pursuing a different goal than ours, and thus we get lost along the way. If we do not want to get lost, we must always think before we follow others or act like them.
