At the beginning of every academic year, I try to pray about a theme for my new year of formation. This year, my senior year at Seton Hall and my final year at St. Andrew’s College Seminary, my prayer led me to the theme of Trust in the Lord. In our annual beginning of the year retreat at St. Andrew’s, we prayed with the series The Chosen. We focused on three different episodes of the chosen which each served as a meditation on three different accounts form the Gospel. Through meditating with the Gospel and The Chosen, the Holy Spirit led me to focus in on that theme of trust, as trusting in Our Lord is essential for us to be able to truly follow Him. The first episode that we focused on meditated on the call of St. Peter and his brother, St. Andrew, and this episode is what really brought me to that desire to truly trust in Him.
For me, the call of St. Peter, as depicted in The Chosen, is the most powerful scene in the first season of the show. Facing the threat of incarceration or possibly death, St. Peter labors through the entire night trying to catch enough fish to offset his debts to Cesar, however he does not catch one fish. Having experienced such failure that night, Peter is left feeling abandoned by God and loses all his trust in Him. The next morning while cleaning his nets, St. Peter meets Jesus, the second person of the Triune God in whom he had no trust. Despite Peter’s failure to trust in Him, Christ shows Peter that he can and must trust in Him. At the command of the Lord, Peter throws his nets into the water one final time and through the power of Christ, pulls in more fish than can be fit into his boat. Peter falls to his knees as he realizes his sinful mistake of failing to trust in God, but despite Peter’s sin and after having brought Peter to a deep trust in Him, Jesus calls Peter to go out and be a fisher of men.
In discerning a calling to the priesthood, I am working to grasp that call to truly be a fisher of men. Concerns of one whom Christ calls to be His fisher of men often include feeling like one is unworthy or incapable of doing so, and the fact is that those who are called are in fact unworthy and incapable of this great task. However, this is only true if the fisher of men does not trust in Him who is the true Fisher and Savior of Men. Peter is only able to follow Christ and to become a fisher of men because he trusts in Jesus. God will work with us to bring us to that deep trust in Him, but we need to cooperate with His grace that deepens our trust in Him daily. The unworthiness and incapability of men to become Christ’s fishers of men is completely irrelevant when those whom He has called trust in His power.
The first letter of St. Paul to Timothy speaks beautifully of Christ enabling His followers to be fishers of men. St. Paul writes, “I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief. Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:12-14). St. Paul here is giving thanks to God for his sharing in the ministry of Christ and is acknowledging that the power of Christ is the trust source of his ability to minister to His people. The fishers of men are chosen and appointed by Christ despite their past and future sinfulness as they are brought to be His ministers through the grace and mercy of God. We all are called to be fishers of men in our own individual vocations, but the first step in becoming that fisher of men is to truly trust in Him and in His power to work through us who share in His ministry.
Nickolas Naticchione
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