Dominica 4 post Pentecosten / Evening, 1 July 2017 / Church of St John
Stand out into
the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch (Lk 5:4).
Duc in altum.
Oft-quoted words to young men considering the priesthood. But in point of fact,
they are spoken to all of us.
Consider the net. A net entangles.
That is its first function. It entangles so as to gather and catch and not
release. Sadly, such nets are often tangled about our hearts and spiritual
lives. Our weaknesses, for instance, get tangled round grudges or pains, and
they weigh about our souls. Disappointments or jealousies get gathered in these
nets. Painful memories, traumas, perplexities, illnesses, lusts, sadness,
anger—all these and more can congregate within the nets of the interior lives
of men and women. And even a cursory look around us and within reveals that
such nets are many. In a word, they so often constitute the tragedy of sin and
the burden of life.
But this need not terrify us. For
after our blessed Lord bids St Peter to duc
in altum, he goes on: et laxáte
rétia vestra in captúram. Laxare: loosen, unfasten, release, relieve,
relax; lower. Let fall your nets for a catch.—Yet Christ’s Sacred Heart is the
deep into which we must let fall the nets we carry. This is done by acts of
surrender, the decision of peace, the refusal to worry, and a keen
understanding of the simplicity of the spiritual life.
Understand this correctly, dear
friends. It was the doctrine of the Quietists that said, “perfect resignation
reduces the soul to a state in which its only activity is to know that God
exists.”[1] But the Quietists were
wrong and were condemned as such. This was a heresy that flourishing in the
late seventeenth century. We are not talking about a motionless waiting around
for God to do something.—No, there are real and grace-given human acts that
constitute our spiritual life. St Peter had to navigate the ship, drop the net,
and haul the fish. But the point is that whatever requires our doing in the spiritual life, requires,
in fact and first of all, this obedience and trust—not our own cleverness or
ability to arrange and perfect everything.
St Peter’s sins and worries fell upon
him heavily like the tangled catch of fish at his feet, and we know the
feeling. It brings him to his knees and excuse-making before the Lord of Life,
who responds (if I may paraphrase), “That is not the point, Simon; fear not.
From now on you shall catch men.”
St Peter gives us the proof: God does not need our anxiety and excuses;
he asks for our trust and obedience. Trust is that confidence that one who
promises will make good on what is promised; the hope that all shall be well;
the combination of a sense of peace and safety and favorable expectation. Obedience
seems a hard word to us. But obedience is a listening with the ear of the heart
and responding with a prompt yes to the
demand of what is heard. To obey is to do the good without always knowing the
full import. To obey is to entrust the treasure of our will—of our own
preferences and ideas and comforts—into the sovereign, wise will of God, he who
is the Lover of all mankind and the source of all goodness.
Next week we will meditate on how and
whom we are to trust and obey. Now is a moment of seeing the necessity of trust
and obedience. That master of the spiritual life, Jean-Pierre de Caussade,
wrote this: “Perfection is neither more nor less than the faithful cooperation
of the soul with this work of God”—his making us like himself—and this work “is
begun, grows, and is consummated in the soul unperceived and in secret.”[2] But this process is
impossible without trust and obedience. Like St Peter, ours is to put into the
deep of the Sacred Heart, to let down the nets that tangle us, and then we
shall cooperate in the supernatural catch of a virtue and grace.
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