Vocations Archives - Amazing Catechists

What is Your Eternal Job Description? The Lesson of Martha and Mary

The recent gospel story of Martha and Mary (LK 10: 38-42) is one of the most powerful and profound expressions of an eternal struggle many of us face on a daily basis. People grapple with their ‘job descriptions’ every single day, just like Martha was doing.

Quite often our job description is about as secular as it can get. We focus on what we need to focus on to succeed in this world. The next day, however, we sway toward a crooked, but hopefully sincere, struggle to define our ‘eternal’ job as saving our own souls and those of others while serving and loving God and others.

While a certain amount of shuffling between a secular and our sacred, eternal job description is allowed in our daily pilgrimage through this world toward God, we must always take stock and adjust. We need to maintain the overall direction of our efforts – facing due Heaven and not due earth. What are the signs that we are straying toward earth more than toward Heaven in this daily struggle?

Burdens

In Luke’s gospel, Martha feels burdened by her earthly tasks and complains to Our Lord. Whatever earthly loads we may be carrying, feeling burdened certainly seems par for the course regarding all of them. Earthly tasks carry physical, emotional, psychological, social, financial, practical, and many other kinds of burdens. As physical beings, we will certainly feel those burdens on a regular basis.

Our burdens can surely tire, frustrate, and exasperate us. While it is both normal and expected that we will all feel these strains from time to time, there is a high correlation between our eternal job description and just how much and how regularly we are feeling such burdens. Those with an earthly focus will tend to feel more and increasingly burdened by these loads because earthly burdens tend to seem all-consuming and endless.

In fact, earthy burdens sometimes seem insurmountable and pointless. They can overwhelm us. We can feel lost as to how to handle them, and wonder how they can possibly lead us to any good. A couple consumed and obsessed with buying a home, for example, may pull themselves in all directions trying to save for their goal. They can even lose hope that they will ever achieve it in the light of their difficulties.

Isolation and Abandonment

Martha also expressed resentment that Our Lord did not care about her plight. Martha felt she was being left all alone to deal with her burden. Once we become distracted or lost in an earthly focus, however, we measure and judge according to the dictates and standards of this world and not of God. Negative, earthly feelings such as resentment, anger, bitterness, and jealousy creep in. These secular standards and measures tell us that we are getting the short end of the stick and even being treated unfairly by God and others. Ironically, we will feel isolated and abandoned by God and others precisely because our self-obsession and warped self-pity will not allow us to find fulfillment or joy in focusing on the needs of others.

It is easy to see that Martha was only focused on herself in this situation. She was feeling unfairly treated and did not care to see anything other than that view of the situation. Martha even went as far as to judge and question Our Lord’s stance in all of this! Do we not do the same when we pray for something and then resent it when we feel our prayers are not answered?

Enticing Others to Our Mistake

Martha’s resentment and frustration led her to ask Our Lord to make Mary join her in her mistake! I have often read that one of the devil’s greatest delights in pushing us to sin is successfully convincing us to join in his mistake of rejecting God. Misery loves company, and Martha’s self-obsession leads her to demand that Our Lord order Mary to make the same mistake that she has made. This warped delusion of self and righteousness goes as far as pretending that one’s foolishness is actually one’s enlightenment and that others should follow one’s “light.”

Our Lord tells Martha that she is worried and anxious about pointless things that will not ultimately amount to a hill of beans to her eternity. We stray from the path to Our Lord to the extent that we seek our treasure among things that do not lead us to him. Washing dishes and making beds are not inherent evils. Fixing the car and installing a new garage door opener are not inherently bad. Fixing the air conditioning and paying our bills are not superficial and useless tasks. However, while we should focus on and accomplish these things as we can, we must never reach the point of worrying and obsessing over these tasks and duties as if they are all that matters. Such worry and obsession only pushes God to the background for another day.

Where is God to You?

When we become fixated with things of this world over what matters to heaven, we tend to push heaven to the background and even change how, and even if, we see God at all. If you see God as some sugar daddy who will come to your rescue whenever you need Him, you have lost the proper place of God in your life. Frankly, I am not sure which is worse: forgetting God or distorting what God is. If God is not found in your preoccupation or consideration of some issue or burden, then perhaps you are mired in an overly earthly focus.

The story of Martha and Mary reminds us that we have a daily choice to embrace God or this earth. Too many times, we become so wrapped up in accomplishing what this world expects or even what we think this world expects that we forget what God expects from us. While doing our best to fulfill our tasks and duties in this world is important, we can never allow those tasks and duties to displace God as the center of our lives and focus.

Always place God first, place your earthly burdens before Him, and trust that He will guide you through these struggles!

2019 Gabriel Garnica

Highly Recommended: The Mass of Brother Michel, by Michael Kent

By Lisa Mladinich

The Mass of Brother Michel is an exceptionally entertaining novel with great depth and charm, beautifully told, and set in France during the Protestant Reformation.

Hinging on the love of a young nobleman for his childhood sweetheart, this is at its heart a Eucharistic story, full of surprises, about the way God’s love transforms and blesses the human heart through suffering and struggle.

Ultimately, this exciting and satisfying page-turner grapples with the nature of love itself. Romantic, spiritually insightful, and hilariously funny, the plot features two main characters, Michel and Louise, who do something that rarely occurs in contemporary literature–they grow in holiness. But rather than being a typical religious story wrapped clumsily around an agenda, Michael Kent’s intensely rewarding saga of love and redemption entertains and delights for its authenticity and high-stakes action throughout. The climactic final scene is truly unforgettable.

The Mass of Brother Michel, originally published in 1942 and reprinted in 2017 by Angelico Press, richly deserves to be counted as a spiritual classic on par with the works of Sigrid Undset, Michael O’Brien, and Evelyn Waugh. Kudos to the folks at Angelico for bringing this lost treasure to light and sharing it with the world.

Highly recommended for all who love the Catholic faith, especially the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

NOTE: This book contains mature themes and some violence, but no sexually-explicit content. Appropriate for readers 16 and up.

Living in the Present: The Path to Holiness

By Gabe Garnica

Mother Angelica of EWTN fame once wrote that the only true path to holiness is to live in the present. What did she mean by this?

The Past: For Educational Purposes Only

We all know that the past provides us with many wonderful opportunities to learn and grow. Our mistakes and stumbles provide us with a great educational resource as we try to grow toward God. Everything from learning how to deal with struggles to identifying and appreciating good friends comes from our ability to reflect on our past experiences. However, we should keep the past only for that purpose. Too many people use the past as a pit of resentments, regrets, and ruminations which get us nowhere good. I believe that the past should be like a newspaper: read it, learn from it, and move on.

The Future: God

Many will argue that we must plan for the future. Others will add that anticipating problems is smart thinking. While this is all well and good, the only future we should spend much time on is figuring out how to have an eternity with God. Whatever future we think about better be thought about in the context of how God is involved. A future without God is no future at all.

The Present: Where Holiness Lives

As Mother Angelica so often stressed, too many people lose opportunities for holiness because they spend their time digging up the past or plotting the future. See each moment in the present as the gift from God that it truly is. The key to finding God and getting closer to God is right in front of us each day if we only take the time to look. Remember that the past is done and the future belongs to God. If we live with God in the present, the future will take care of itself and the past will be more gentle on us.

2016 Gabriel Garnica

Embrace the Journey and Seek The Destination

By Gabe Garnica

As a child, I knew a little girl who had a little problem with her family’s vacations. She always loved the different places they would visit, but she never enjoyed the journey getting there. She hated long car drives, was afraid of flying, did not care much for trains, and was simply very impatient and even paranoid about taking too long to get to their destinations. Simply put, she loved where she was going but did not love the different ways she could get there. As odd as this might seem, many of us are the same way about a far more important trip- our earthly journey to our eternal destination.

What Matters

We can all agree that what really matters is that we save our souls and that of as many people as God puts before us to help. Ending up in heaven is the ultimate success story regardless of what stories we wrote here on earth. The most successful person on earth is not a success if he or she loses heaven forever. Conversely, the biggest earthly loser is the ultimate winner if he or she gains heaven forever. That being said, one has to wonder why so many of us worry so much about our journey rather than our destination.

Luggage over Location

Mother Angelica used to wonder why we all worry so much about our earthly journey, this pilgrimage to our heavenly home, when it is simply a path to what really matters. I think that there are a few reasons why we get bogged down in these concerns. First, we end up thinking that the journey is what really matters thanks to this world. Everywhere we go, people pretend that this life is all we have, and that we better make it work the way the world wants it to work. Imagine that you only have $ 5,000 for a trip and you spend $ 4,900 on travel alone. You won’t have much fun once you get to your destination with $ 100 in your pocket. Instead of spending most of your resources on travel, you should embrace the travel level you can use and focus on enjoying your destination instead. I am not suggesting that you go to Mexico on a donkey, but maybe First Class with extras is not very smart if you are on a budget.

Second, I think that many people convince themselves that there is no real destination worth dreaming about anyway. How sad for those who, consciously or not, come to believe that this life is all we have. Knowing much better, we have no excuses to ignore or deny that we are indeed going somewhere eternally of our own earthly choosing. Lastly, many of us lose sight of our destination because we do not keep our eyes, minds, hearts, and souls on it. If we spend most of our time focused on our present trek without looking at where we are headed, we may not end up where we originally intended to go.

Ingredients to The Ultimate Dish

When we cook or bake something, we go out and get the right ingredients and put them together as dictated in a recipe to end up with the desired dish. In order to do this, we need to first buy the right ingredients and then put those ingredients together in the right way. Nobody will suggest that we simply use any ingredients we have at home no matter what because we will not end up with the right dish. Likewise, nobody suggests that we simply buy the right ingredients and throw them on a table because our desired dish must be prepared correctly using these ingredients in the right combination.

In the same way, we must determine what gifts God has given us and how we might combine them in the best way to serve and love God and others. If we do this, we will have the correct recipe to end up with our desired result of eternal salvation. If we do not determine our ingredients or bother to put them together for God and others, we will never end up with our desired eternal result.

Conclusion

Joseph and Mary rode a donkey through treacherous areas on more than one occasion to go where God wanted them to go. They trusted God and knew that He would guide them to the right place. Similarly, we must accept whatever journey God provides us to the place that really matters- heaven.

2017 Gabriel Garnica

Serving God is all about Re-gifting

By Gabe Garnica

As Christmas approaches we begin to hear the familiar stories about gifts, traditions, and what is appropriate or not regarding gifts. I remember growing up hearing horror stories about people passing unwanted gifts to others or, as accurately described in popular culture, “re-gifting”. The argument against this practice centered around being cheap, ungrateful, inconsiderate, and deceptive. The general feeling in those days was that re-gifting was a slap in the face of the original giver, and a blatant sign of ingratitude or disrespect for the time and effort that person put into giving the gift. Certainly, even today, most would agree that giving away a personalized or meaningful gift is improper form, as would be passing over a used or dusty gift from the past.

However, a review of more recent thoughts regarding this practice shows a growing sentiment away from total negativity toward measured acceptance and even praise of this behavior. The general sentiment seems to be that passing off an unwanted gift to someone who might enjoy or use such a gift more is a noble way of avoiding waste and spreading enjoyment. It seems that, as long as good taste and practicality is observed, many people today do not automatically shun re-gifting if the recipient will benefit or enjoy a gift which would otherwise remain unused.

The Magi brought the infant Jesus gifts in the form of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and some joke that the latter two gifts were certainly re-gifted since gold would be the preferred gift. In all seriousness, gifts were part of the very first Christmas because the Infant Jesus is a gift from God in every sense of the word. Moving forward, Our Lord’s entire ministry on earth was a continuous gift as the perfect example of loving service and care for others that we are all called to follow. Saint Therese the Little Flower once stated that she wanted to come before God with empty hands which were free of all the gifts God had given her which had been offered to others. We know from the famous Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) that we are expected to turn God’s investment in our talents into a profit of service to others.

Simply put, we re-gift when we use the gifts God has given us to serve others. Our abilities and skills do not belong to us but, rather, are merely temporary possessions which we must use to bring God’s touch to others. The singer too lazy to sing for others or, worse, who merely uses her talent to gain personal fame and material possessions without helping others is ignoring the purpose of that God-given gift. The excellent public speaker or writer who uses his talent to spread harm or create hatred is certainly misusing his talent.

At the end of the day, then, following Christ is re-gifting for the glory of God, and you are certainly welcome to pass that thought to others.

Gabriel Garnica, 2016

The Saint in the Mirror is Waiting for Your Acceptance

By Gabe Garnica

The Feasts of All Saints and All Souls defy our mistaken belief that sanctity is beyond us. St. Therese of Lisieux reminds us that sanctity is beyond us only if we allow it to be. Most people think of saints as holy super heroes with powers beyond those of mere mortals. Under this view, thinking that one can become a saint is about as naïvely foolish as pretending that one can become a grand pianist while poking at two keys in our first lesson at age eighty.

Why do we so often sell ourselves short when it comes to striving for sanctity?

For one thing, many define a saint as someone who performs extraordinary things in incredible ways, such as working miracles or practicing extreme penances and sacrifices. Certainly, there are saints who have done this, but they are the more famous saints and not representative of the vast majority.

St. Therese of Lisieux reminds us that becoming a saint is no more than seeking to please God by doing the ordinary extraordinarily well. Fame and public relations have nothing to do with sanctity. St. Therese is famous now, but she was a virtually unknown, cloistered Carmelite during her life. One must only seek to please God over seeking fame, fortune, or self-benefit.

The saint is one wrapped in God, in love, and in service. If we always put God first, others second, and ourselves last, we will be on the way to sanctity.

We grow in sanctity by merely striving for sanctity, and we must never feel that we are holy enough for God. The saint is not complacent because there is always more to do for God.

Another reason that many ignore or surrender their calling to be saints is that it is much easier to pretend that sanctity is impossible than to admit that it is very possible. There is no criticism of the grade school student who fails a bar exam because nobody expects such a student to pass it. Likewise, the very young and inexperienced skater who fails to medal in a competition is not rebuked because nobody expects her to be ready to medal anyway.

Still others argue that they are not called to be saints because of this or that reason. Such people forget that saints come in all shapes, colors, backgrounds, talents, and types. In fact, we need diverse saints because people and the Church have diverse needs.

I once read that inventions are merely creative ways to solve problems and answer needs. We are each a unique, beautiful invention of God. Each of us is blessed with special gifts and talents waiting to be used in His service. God invites each of us to fulfill that purpose and that potential to be saints. Our mistaken notion that saints are superheroes beyond our abilities prevents us from daring to believe that we too can become saints.

Armed with God’s love and mercy and dressed in our faith, each of us is a saint waiting to happen. The question is not if we can become saints. Rather, the issue is will we accept Our Lord’s standing, loving invitation to serve Him and love others with the very tools He has provided.

Gabriel Garnica, 2016

Why Magnifying the Lord is Our Mission as Christians

By Gabe Garnica

One of my favorite prayers in Scripture is Mary’s beautiful Magnificat, which begins with the phrase, “ My soul magnifies the Lord”(Luke 1:46) Curious about the use of “magnify” in Scripture, I discovered that it is used well over 100 times. If you think about it, is there a better way to describe our purpose as followers of Christ?

See the Lord in Proper Place and Perspective

To begin, we must realize that magnifying The Lord does not mean that we are making Him more since that would be absurd. How can we, imperfect creatures of God, make our perfect Creator more? A magnifying glass does not make its target image bigger. Rather, it makes that target bigger for us to see better. There is no imperfection or limitation in the object but, rather, in ourselves that we need help in seeing that object more clearly.

Although God is perfection and all good, we often need reminders that He can seem small to us if we forget His Presence in our lives. First, we need to magnify that Presence in ourselves through our worship, praise, humility, and good works. Second, we need to magnify that Presence in others through those same good works, our example, and our proclamation of God’s Word.

Remove Our Splinters and Thread Our Needles

We have all had the unpleasant experience of having a splinter in our hand. Everyone knows that such a task often requires the use of a magnifying glass to help us remove this obstruction. This brings the mind Christ’s powerful reminder that we first remove our defects before presuming to point out those of other people ( Matthew 7:5). It is easy to judge others in our drive to drive to be holier-than-thou, but Christ tells us to be humble. Regardless of the size of our defects, we often see them, if we do at all, as mere splinters. How often do we downplay our faults while magnifying the faults of others? We need to see our sins more clearly if we are to truly avoid continuing them.

Another famous passage reminds us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to find eternal salvation ( Luke 18:25). We understand this to mean that we cannot save ourselves unless we release our obsession with the temporary, temporal, and superficial things of this world. Self-reflection will enlarge the eye of our moral needle allowing us to navigate this delicate balance between our present and eternal needs.

Start a Fire

A final use of a magnifying glass is to start a fire by focusing heat and energy on a given point. We do this by concentrating diffuse light into a powerful beam. While our lives bear their share of darkness and light, even our light can often be diffused. We need passion, dedication, commitment, and constancy to focus that light into one important purpose.

Christ’s mission and His apostles sought to light a fire under others and motivate them to spread the flame of Our Lord’s love message. We need to inspire others and we do that by magnifying the power of God’s love and the example of Christ’s teaching unto hearts and minds that still lack such a blessing.

Conclusion

Magnifying glasses do many great things that make our lives better. However, we have the same capacity to prioritize, self-reflect, and ignite and spread dedication to Our Lord. Biblical magnification is not about ourselves but about magnifying God (Psalm 35:26-27).

Let us each be a magnifying glass for The Lord, for that in essence is what being His follower is really about.

2016 Gabriel Garnica

There is no Failure in the Hands of God

By Gabe Garnica

Have you ever thrown your hands up in disgust and declared yourself a failure in some desired endeavor? We increasingly define failure as the inability to achieve or accomplish something that we want to obtain. How foolish must we seem in the eyes of Heaven, for the only failure in the universe is failing to leave all in the Hands of God.

We all complain from time to time when things do not go our way, when setbacks seem to become too commonplace, and when we fall on our face so often that cleaning it almost seems like a waste of time. Consider the cases of Louis and Zélie Martin , who each desperately wanted to enter religious life only to see their hopes dashed by academic issues in the first case and health issues in the second. While both of them moved on to start their own businesses, they shared in many others’ view that they had failed miserably in their most desired religious vocations. These two “losers” in the eyes of society were brought together in marriage by God’s providence yet, still desperate for lives of meditation and prayer, they agreed to live a state of virginal chastity. However, even that effort collapsed when their confessor asked them to give up their virginal agreement in order to rear children.

St. Bridget of Sweden is known for having composed a number of beautiful prayers in honor of Christ’s Passion, which was a passion of hers as well. She was married for about 25 years and bore eight children before becoming a widow. Often noted as an excellent example of balancing one’s domestic and spiritual life, Bridget had been devoted to practicing her faith and teaching that faith to her children throughout her marriage. After her husband’s death, Bridget founded a religious order, but was never able to completely organize it, watching others do that task. In fact, scholars cite that Bridget failed in all of the major things which she set out to do.

So pervasive was St. Bridget’s inability to accomplish the major things which she attempted that she is considered the Patroness of Failure. Despite this, we have those beautiful prayers and devotions to the Passion of Christ which she loved so much.

What do Our Lord’s Passion, St. Bridget, and the Martins have in common? All three are vivid representations that our earthly definition of failure is worthless in the eyes of God, Who alone has the blueprint for eternal salvation. We cannot fail as long as we place ourselves in the Hands of The Almighty, for our small stumbles and temporary disappointments are but stepping stones of God’s deeper plan for our lives and our purpose in this world. What of our duo of failures, Louis and Zélie Martin? One of their children became Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, proclaimed the youngest Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II. In fact, Louis and Zelie Martin were beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 and canonized by Pope Francis in 2015.

The Martins and Bridget remind us that God’s Majesty transcends earthly notions of defeat, as best demonstrated in Calvary. An ancient proverb attributed to a 16^th Century Portuguese Bishop states that “God draws straight with crooked lines”. This saying reminds us that things do not always go as planned, for we are imperfect human beings with human failings. However, trust and faith in God means that there is an ultimate sense and purpose to adversity, stumbles, and changes in our path. There is no coincidence, bad luck, or Plan B with God. The only tools we need to overcome our falls are faith and trust in the One who is well versed in turning falls into glory.

2016, Gabriel Garnica

The Home Recipe for Sanctity: Blessed Anna Maria Taigi

By Gabe Garnica

We recently celebrated the feast day of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, an ordinary housewife and mother to seven children ( June 9) and, as often happens with saints’ feasts, the timing could not have been better!

Bl. Anna Maria Taigi was an ordinary person with earthly responsibilities, a spouse, and children. She was vain and superficial in her youth despite not ever being wealthy, just as each of us can be from time to time. This wonderful woman came to sanctity and service of God from the same difficulties and concerns that each of us faces on a daily basis. Her self-reflection and interior illumination allowed her to see the poor state of her soul, and she undertook a life of obedience, humility, patience, and selfless service as the remedy.

Her strong interior illumination showed the state of her soul with the effects of sin and its misery before God. With that, she embarked on a life of obedience, mortifications, submission, patience, humility and self-renunciation. She developed in this effort, finding ways to fulfill her duties while practicing total submission to the Will of God. It became her mission to comfort others in as many ways as possible. Anna Maria balanced her efforts between the practical necessities of her earthly responsibilities and the spiritual necessities of her family, such as teaching her children how to pray properly. In addition, she devoted herself to the Church, and especially to the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion, attending daily Mass. She also had a special devotion to Our Lady and to the Holy Trinity.

Anna Maria is yet another example, like St. Therese The Little Flower, that sanctity comes not so much from what we do but, more importantly, how we do what we do. She became a renown healer and a great mystic, conversed with Jesus and Mary, and displayed various supernatural gifts from God, including the ability to see all things hidden in the present and the future.

Too many people disqualify themselves from sanctity by embracing the myth that saints are born saints, and that sanctity depends upon the age in which one lives. In truth, saints are made via love and service to God and others, and sanctity can arise in any age. Blessed Anna Maria Taigi reminds us that no matter what our state in life or vocation, we are called to replace self-love and self-will with the will of God. By kissing and embracing whatever crosses Our Lord may send us out of love, we will turn any cross into a ladder to Heaven. This holy woman turned the ordinary into the extraordinary simply through love of God and others. In this so-called modern world which increasingly has no time for God, Anna Maria Taigi comes as a reminder that any time without God is simply wasted time indeed.

2016, Gabriel Garnica

Letting Go of Our Nets: A Journey with Peter

By Maureen Smith

The Call

Yesterday morning I took the walk of shame down the side aisle of the Chapel, 5 minutes late and we were already at the Gospel. Frustrated and feeling confirmation that I was definitely a failure at absolutely everything if I couldn’t even make it to Mass on time, I then listened to the Gospel and underneath my gritted teeth felt a sense of relief and the first sign of a smile since yesterday. Having experienced a personal failure a week ago (joining the ranks of the unemployed), I felt comforted by the life and example of Peter.

In the Call of Peter in Mark’s Gospel, which we read yesterday, Jesus clarifies Peter’s vocation and asks him to leave behind what he thought defined him for a life of intimacy and trust in the Lord rather than in the success of the work of his hands.

Similarly, in Luke’s account of the Call of Peter, Jesus uses a moment of failure (on the part of Peter to provide fish after working all night) to reveal His identity as the Son of God while also challenging Peter to discover his own identity, not as a fisherman but as Jesus calls him in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a “fisher of men.” John’s Gospel recounts a somewhat different, but not inconsistent, first encounter. Here Jesus also reveals to Peter (then Simon) his identity by renaming him Cephas (Peter).

Let It Go!

As we see in our scriptural pilgrimage, it takes Peter a while to really let go of what he thinks constitutes his identity, as well as his ideas of the Messiah and how His glory should be manifested. We see this when he fails to walk on water, when he rebukes Jesus for predicting his crucifixion, and when he denies Jesus three times.

He may have left behind his fisherman’s nets but there are still many figurative nets holding him back from receiving the truth of his identity as well as what it means to be an Apostle, probably because he is unable to believe the totality of Jesus’s identity which He holds unfolds (albeit sometimes cryptically) to Peter and the others.

Nets

So often we, too, link our accomplishments and the outcomes of our efforts to our identity so that, if and when they fail to measure up to our standards or those of others, we judge ourselves to be inadequate and are quickly overtaken by tidal waves of unworthiness. We assess ourselves by how productive work was, the number on the scale, the number of miles we ran, positive feedback, approval of others, or any other combination of worldly measures of success. It is not wrong that we have aspirations, but it is not true that these standards have any bearing on our identity and worthiness of God’s love and mercy. What are the “nets” we cling to for a sense of acceptance and worthiness that, although they may be part of our calling, are not essential to our identity? Do we need to put them down as Jesus instructs Peter in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew? Or do we need to trust in Jesus’s intercession and instruction as we see in Luke?

Do we struggle to put down these nets because we have a hard time believing in Jesus as truly God, as truly more powerful than our little mistakes or failures to “make something of ourselves?” Yes we can know the truth intellectually, but do we really believe in Jesus, in His power and authority over sin and death, and in the truth that our identity comes from Him rather than our accomplishments or lackthereof?

When Our Nothingness Encounters God’s Mercy

When we experience failure before the Lord we can become afraid and the shame we feel can be a barrier to further intimacy with him. But these encounters with our weaknesses are often the point of entry for the Lord, just as they were teaching moments and opportunities for Peter.

I think often of how ashamed Peter must have felt in Luke’s account of the Call of Peter. He would have felt a similar sense of failure throughout his journey with Jesus, however, Jesus uses these opportunities to fill the emptiness in Peter’s heart with His light and truth, which Peter will more fully embrace at Pentecost.

Saint Therese’s thoughts on this passage, recorded in Divine Intimacy by Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalene, give us a refreshing outlook on what Jesus can do with our failures. She writes, “Had the Apostle caught some small fish, perhaps our divine Master would not have, worked a miracle; but he had caught nothing, and so through the power and goodness of God his nets were soon filled with great fishes. Such is Our Lord’s way. He gives as God, with divine generosity, but He insists on humility of heart.”

In her italics, Therese shows us the keys (no pun intended) to how Peter learned to follow the Lord. We will often find ourselves in the “nothing” stage. This is where the Lord’s grace is most efficacious. However, she warns that He “insists on humility of heart.” This means that we must, like Peter, let go of our fear of failure and put our whole trust in the Jesus and let him be Who He says He is, God!

Now imagine how Jesus looked at Peter in his moments of failure, for example, after a full night of reeling in net after net of nothing. Or when Jesus, after His Resurrection asks Peter if he loves Him. His gaze must have been quite the opposite of Peter’s inward gaze of self-judgment, which actually distorts his perception of how Jesus sees him.

As was the case with Peter, Jesus looks upon our failures with mercy, not with shame, impatience, disgust, etc. He may not immediately reveal His glory in our failures, that usually takes time. We may not reel in a miraculous abundance of tangible goods. Most of our failures will probably require at least a bit of waiting and trusting that eventually Jesus will use this emptiness or failure for His glory and His plan for our welfare…not woe.

Spoiler Alert! (We Will Live Happily Ever After)

Peter, whose blunders are so frequent in the Gospels, shows us that we too can achieve greatness. His ministry most likely did not feel or look successful. It looked much like that of Christ whose life and ministry was looked upon as a failure up until the Resurrection. So also our lives may appear to be lacking in value, but if we remain under the gaze of Jesus and strive to live in the truth of our identity as Children of God, we will achieve the greatest success, sainthood.

Someday, in Heaven, we will hopefully be able chat with Peter, praise God, and laugh about our failures which were transformed into our greatest moments of sanctity. We might feel like we are currently getting a poor return for our efforts, but trust in the example of Peter, it’s worth the struggle!