St. Luke tells us that on one occasion Jesus was preaching beside the Sea of Galilee and the crowd pressed so closely around him that he asked for the use of a boat. Some fishermen nearby were washing their nets after a long night of unsuccessful work. They had finished the greater part of their labour and were probably preparing to go home and rest. Jesus stepped into Simon’s boat and continued teaching the people from there. When he had finished, however, he did not simply return to shore. He turned to Simon and told him, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
Simon had every human reason to hesitate. He and his companions had worked throughout the night, when fishing conditions should have been better, and had caught nothing. They knew their trade and had done what experience told them to do. They were tired, discouraged and ready to stop. Yet Simon replied, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing; but at your word I will let down the nets.”
The result was an extraordinary catch. The difference between the fruitless night and the abundance that followed was not greater skill, better conditions or renewed physical energy. It was the presence of Christ and Simon’s willingness to act on his word. The fishermen still had to take the boat out and lower the nets. Grace did not eliminate their effort. But their effort, joined to trust in Christ, became fruitful in a way they could not have achieved by themselves.
This scene gives us a fundamental lesson about the spiritual life. Holiness does not consist simply in fulfilling a set of practices through determination and self-discipline. It is the life of Christ growing within us. We must cooperate fully with grace, but we cannot produce holiness by our own strength. Our spiritual life develops through a mysterious union of our freedom with God’s action. We make resolutions, struggle against our defects and use the human means available to us, while knowing that the deepest transformation of our soul is God’s work.
We easily fall into one of two errors. We may expect God to do everything while making little serious effort ourselves, or we may rely almost entirely on our own determination and treat the spiritual life as a project of self-improvement. Neither approach is sufficient. If we do not struggle, good desires remain ineffective. If we struggle without relying on God, our efforts can gradually become tense and discouraging because we expect our own willpower to produce results that only grace can bring about.
The image of a boat with two oars helps us understand the balance we need. One oar is personal effort; the other is trust in God. If we use only one, the boat turns in circles. We need to struggle seriously while depending completely upon God. We pray, form good habits and begin again after failure, but we never imagine that success depends solely on us. The more deeply we understand our dependence upon grace, the freer our effort becomes.
This is especially important when we have been struggling for a long time without seeing the progress we expected. We may have worked sincerely against the same fault for years and still find it present. We make resolutions to become more patient, recollected or generous and then discover that the same weaknesses return. Like the fishermen after their fruitless night, we can begin to wonder whether our efforts have accomplished anything.
At such moments, discouragement may reveal that we were relying more on ourselves than we realized. We may have expected our knowledge, experience or determination to guarantee a certain result. When they do not, we feel as though everything has failed. The Gospel reminds us that what we need most is not the assurance that our own efforts will succeed, but the presence of Christ in the boat.
Our Lord did not promise Simon in advance that the nets would be filled. Simon obeyed because Jesus had spoken. Something similar is often asked of us. We may not know what visible fruit our struggle will produce or how quickly we will change. We continue because Christ asks us to remain faithful. “At your word I will let down the nets” expresses a trust that is deeper than confidence in results.
The command of Jesus is also significant: “Put out into the deep.” To grow in the interior life, we have to leave the security of always having everything under our control. Close to shore, we can still feel the bottom beneath our feet and reassure ourselves that we are safe. The deeper water is different. There we have to entrust ourselves to the boat and accept that not everything can be measured or predicted.
We often resist this in our relationship with God. We want clear signs that we are progressing and reassurance that we are making the right decisions. We look for confirmation in our feelings, in the approval of others or in circumstances that seem to indicate that everything is going well. These things can sometimes help us, but they cannot become the foundation of our peace.
An excessive need for certainty can make us spiritually anxious. We begin to interpret every small event as though it carried a hidden message about God’s will. A word of praise encourages us, while criticism makes us doubt everything. A period of consolation convinces us that we are progressing, and dryness makes us wonder whether we have gone backward. We become too dependent upon signs that change from day to day.
God does not always give us the certainty we would like. Sometimes this is precisely what helps us grow. If everything were always clear, we might begin to rely more on our ability to read the signs than on God himself. Faith asks us to act responsibly, seek good advice and use prudence, while accepting that we will not always know with complete certainty how events will unfold.
Abandonment does not mean passivity or indifference. We still make decisions and accept responsibility for them. We struggle in the areas where we can genuinely act and then leave what is beyond our control in God’s hands. We cannot command our feelings or guarantee that temptations will disappear. We cannot force visible results in our apostolate or ensure that every good effort succeeds. What we can do is remain faithful in the present moment.
This distinction can save us from much unnecessary discouragement. A temptation may continue despite our sincere resistance, and we may wrongly conclude that we are failing simply because the temptation has not disappeared. Yet the important thing is not whether we feel entirely free of struggle but whether we remain faithful within it. We may find a duty difficult and think that after so many years it should no longer cost us. But difficulty itself is not evidence of failure. God may be asking us simply to continue.
Our spiritual struggle is not intended to produce constant pleasant feelings. Consolation can be a gift, but it is not the measure of holiness. We can pray faithfully while feeling distracted, continue serving others when enthusiasm is absent and remain close to God during periods when his presence seems less evident. If our peace depends upon feeling that we are progressing, we will always be vulnerable to discouragement. Deeper peace comes from knowing that we belong to God and are trying sincerely to do his will.
This is why abandonment is so closely connected with trust. We place the results in God’s hands because he sees more than we do. We may not know whether a particular effort will bear visible fruit or whether a struggle will last much longer than we hoped. We do know that nothing offered to him in love is wasted.
The miraculous catch teaches Peter this in a way he could never forget. When the nets became so full that they began to break, he suddenly recognized the presence of God in what had happened. He fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” The abundance did not make Peter proud of his fishing. It made him aware of his own inadequacy and of the greatness of Christ.
The previous night’s failure had prepared him for this realization. If the fishing had gone well from the beginning, Peter might simply have attributed the success to his experience and skill. Because he had already exhausted his own resources, he could see more clearly that the extraordinary catch was a gift. Sometimes our failures serve us in the same way. They reveal the limits of our strength and help us recognize how much we depend upon God.
We should not seek failure or imagine that every setback has been directly sent by God. But when something goes badly despite sincere effort, we can ask what he may be teaching us through the experience. Perhaps we need to change our approach or correct a mistake. At other times, the deeper lesson may simply be that we are not self-sufficient.
Our own defects can also bring us to this awareness. We often wish that certain weaknesses would disappear entirely. We become impatient with ourselves because the same tendencies continue to surface. Yet God can use even these limitations to draw us closer to him, provided we continue to struggle honestly.
We need to learn to accept ourselves as we actually are, not as we imagine we should already be. This does not mean becoming complacent about our faults. We should want to overcome whatever prevents us from loving God and others more fully. But we cannot build the spiritual life upon irritation with ourselves. Growth begins with reality.
The Word became flesh and accepted the ordinary limitations of human nature, apart from sin. Christ knew fatigue, hunger and the need for rest. He entered fully into the condition of creatures. We too must accept that we are limited. Some weaknesses may remain with us for a long time and continue to require struggle. Our holiness does not depend upon becoming flawless through our own efforts but upon allowing Christ to transform us through grace.
The calm recognition of our weakness can even become a source of joy. When we see clearly that the good in our life is not simply the result of our own skill, we become more grateful. We recognize the hand of God in what we could not have accomplished alone. Like Peter looking at the overflowing nets, we begin to understand that the fruit belongs ultimately to him.
This awareness should lead us not to discouragement but to contrition. Genuine contrition does not leave us staring endlessly at our faults. It turns us back toward Christ. We recognize what we have done badly, ask forgiveness and begin again. In this sense, contrition is one of the great paths to freedom because it prevents failure from becoming final.
The spiritual life is full of new beginnings. We make a resolution and fail to keep it perfectly. We lose patience after deciding to be more understanding or become distracted after resolving to pray better. The temptation is to conclude that we have made no progress. Yet every sincere return to God is itself an act of love and trust.
St. Josemaría often emphasized the need to begin and begin again. This is not a concession to mediocrity but the normal rhythm of Christian growth. We cooperate with the Holy Spirit without trying to take his place. We make a real effort, but when we fall we do not remain on the ground analyzing our failure indefinitely. We return to Christ and resume the struggle.
This attitude protects us both from pride and discouragement. Pride tells us that we should be able to succeed through our own strength. Discouragement tells us that because we have failed, there is no point in trying again. Trust avoids both errors. We know that we are weak, but we also know that God is faithful.
Peter’s life shows this repeatedly. He could be generous and impulsive, courageous one moment and afraid the next. He promised that he would never abandon Christ and then denied him three times. Yet Jesus continued forming him. Peter learned gradually that his confidence could not rest in himself. After the Resurrection, Christ entrusted him again with the care of the Church.
Near the end of Peter’s life, the words Jesus had spoken to him took on their full meaning: “When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” Peter had to move from self-reliance toward a deeper surrender. His maturity consisted not in becoming passive but in allowing his will to become increasingly united with Christ’s.
The same journey belongs to each of us. At first, we may imagine that the spiritual life consists mainly in mastering ourselves and acquiring the virtues through determination. Over time, we discover that something much deeper is taking place. God is teaching us to trust him. Our will does not disappear, but it is gradually purified and brought into harmony with his.
This abandonment gives peace because it frees us from the impossible task of controlling everything. We still plan, act and take responsibility, but we no longer demand certainty about every outcome. We do what reasonably lies within our power and leave the rest to God.
There will be times when the nets remain empty. We may pray for someone and see no apparent change, struggle against a defect without visible progress or work hard at something that fails. At other times, the nets will be unexpectedly full. In either case, our task is the same: remain close to Christ.
Success can teach us gratitude and failure can teach us dependence. Both can bring us closer to God if we receive them properly. The decisive question is not whether everything turns out as we hoped, but whether we continue to say with Peter, “At your word I will let down the nets.”
Trusting in God therefore does not mean waiting passively for him to solve everything. It means struggling with all our strength while knowing that grace is the deeper source of every good result. We use both oars: effort and confidence. We put out into the deep even when we cannot see the bottom and accept that we will not always have the reassurance we would like.
When we fail, we return. When we are uncertain, we continue to act prudently without demanding perfect clarity. When we succeed, we remember who filled the nets. In this way, our struggle gradually becomes more peaceful because we stop trying to take God’s place.
The lesson of the miraculous catch is ultimately very simple. Peter had worked without Christ and returned empty-handed. Then, tired and uncertain, he acted on Christ’s word and discovered an abundance he could never have produced by himself. Our own path will often follow the same pattern. We do what we can, admit the limits of our strength and allow Christ into the boat. Then we begin again, trusting that whatever fruit our life bears will come through the mysterious union of our effort with his grace.
*By the Via Virtutis team
Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash
