By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THAT gospel episode about Christ commanding Peter to “go to the deep and lower down your nets for a catch” (Lk 5,4) reminds us, among other things, that we should be bold and aggressive in our Christian life, stretching ourselves to the limits to do apostolate and actively cooperate in the continuing work of human redemption.
Peter at first told Christ that he tried to fish the whole night before and caught nothing. But because of his strong faith in Christ, he just obeyed what Christ told him, and lo and behold, he caught a big amount of fish. Fully astonished, he could not help but tell Christ to depart from him for, as he said, “I am sinful man.” That was when Christ told him to be a fisher of men.
We need to understand that our Christian life will always be involved in the continuing work of human redemption. It is in essence also an apostolic life, something that we have to be most aware of and for which we should be duly trained. The ideal to pursue is to be zealous in doing apostolate, always coming up with effective apostolic plans and strategies.
Christ’s intense desire for human redemption, expressed in his words, “I came to set fire to the world, and I wish it were already burning!” (Lk 12,49) should also be the desire of a true disciple of Christ.
This is something we have to be more conscious about, since right now I believe that many of us are buried under a heavy albeit deceivingly sweet yoke of spiritual lethargy. We take things easy in our spiritual and apostolic life. What would arouse us are mainly material and worldly things.
We need to react to this stranglehold of our spiritual and apostolic life, helping one another to be more spiritually alive, considering each one’s conditions and possibilities, giving good example and timely pieces of advice and suggestions, and leading the way in actively cooperating in this exhilarating divine adventure God is inviting us to join in this life.
Everyday, we should be seized by that urge to “carpe diem,” to kind of strike while the iron is hot. If we have faith, each day brings with it its own adventure orchestrated by God in his abiding providence, and we are invited to it since we are supposed to be co-agents with God in our life here.
To be sure, our life here on earth is never just an interplay of our plans and the other natural forces. God is very much in it, a fact that we have to be more aware of it and more importantly, better skilled in handling. We cannot go on unmindful of this fundamental truth.
We should not be afraid to enter and take most active part in this drama with God and others, because even if it involves everything and all sorts of trials and difficulties, it is always worth it. This is what our life is really all about. We avoid making a fiction of our life, deluded by its false images.
To top it all, if we have faith and trust in God, we know, in spite of passing contradictions, that what we get involved in is always something for the good of all of us in all aspects of our life, from the most personal to the most global.
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
