Frustration and Exhaustion

Homily for Thursday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

I’m sure that we could all identify with the frustration that Simon Peter must have felt after a night of fishing and coming home with empty nets. Nothing is more frustrating than efforts that prove to be fruitless. That kind of frustration can also be experienced in our efforts to improve our spiritual life. Perhaps we feel that our efforts to pray have failed to produce spiritual fruits for which we had been seeking.

Where ever we are and whenever this happens, Jesus meets us there. We are not alone, and God will help us to fill our nets. However, in order to produce this desired effect, we must lay down everything, recognizing that everything comes from God and not from our own efforts.

The message that we hear in the first reading from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians comes at the issue from a different perspective but provides us with the same result. Boasting of our own accomplishments is folly. We must recognize that everything that we have and everything that we do belongs to Christ because it belongs to us, and we belong to Christ. St. Paul takes us even further by asserting that all that belongs to Christ belongs to the Father.

The familiar message of “Do not be afraid!” appears at the end of the story from St. Luke’s Gospel. Simon Peter was astonished by the huge catch of fish, so much so that he begs Jesus to leave. He recognizes that he did not trust Jesus and begrudgingly lowered his nets when asked to do so. The frustration and exhaustion that he was experiencing when Jesus appeared at the lakeside had led him to desperation. Jesus assures him that placing his trust in Jesus is the answer to that frustration and exhaustion. The same is true for us.