The Risk of Taking the High Road
Simone Riva - There is always an encounter waiting for us, just as happened to Peter after he had caught nothing that night. It takes courage to take risks.
“When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out to sea and cast your nets for fishing.’” (Luke 5:4) In today’s Gospel we find this very famous phrase. It is one that is quoted countless times. It often appears on little devotional cards featuring striking images of boats and nets by the lake. Set to music, it has entered the repertoire of liturgical songs for years. In short, it is one of those expressions of Jesus that everyone knows. However, as often happens with famous quotations, time tends to wear them down, and so the force with which they were once spoken and heard can fade away.
Let us imagine, instead, the scene of that day: “While the crowds were pressing in on him to hear the word of God, Jesus, standing by the lake of Gennesaret, saw two boats by the shore. The fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat” (Luke 5:1–3). All of a sudden, however, Christ turns to Peter. He is not content merely to speak to the crowds—He did not come for men and women simply interested in His words, but for those amazed by reality—so He takes action: “When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out to sea and cast your nets for fishing.’”
At first, Peter resists for the most understandable reasons: “Master, we toiled all night and caught nothing.” It is as if he is saying, “We already tried, but it didn’t work. This is not the day.” Yet in his heart there is something that resists giving in to discouragement: “But on your word I will cast the nets.”
The meeting of Christ’s initiative and Peter’s willingness creates a twofold miracle: the astonishing catch of fish and the amazement that recognizes it as a sign. This encounter is the one awaiting each of us at the threshold of our daily life. There is a way of experiencing our circumstances that yields to the handbrake of failure, where the outcome of our attempts becomes the sole measure of life. The alternative is to take up the challenge to go out to sea—not as an empty slogan or a cue for some sentimental outburst, but as the impetus of one whose only destination is the hundredfold here and now, and eternal life.
But who, today, still has the courage to challenge us as Christ did that day with Peter? We recognize so many who want us to keep our heads down, our desires short, our minds quiet. Then, all of a sudden, someone appears who lives differently, who looks at us differently, and who can’t wait to see us let go of our moorings. He knows our fears, understands our resistance, is patient with our mistakes, but does not give up.
This paves the way for the emergence of free men and women, not hung up on mere theories of life but curious about what has yet to be revealed within them. Alda Merini dramatically expresses this tension in one of her haunting poems:
“Jesus,
perhaps it is for fear of your unclean thorns
that I do not seek you, for that back bent under the cross
that I do not want to imitate you.
Perhaps, as St. Peter did,
I deny you for fear of weeping.
But I walk through you at every hour
and I’m there on a street corner
and I wait for you to pass.
And I have a handkerchief, love,
that no one has ever touched,
to wipe your face.”
When was the last time we called Jesus “love”? And someone “father”? Everything is decided here. All the rest is just a big waste of time, wherever it comes from.
