Why are zeal and effort not enough in apostolic work?
Christ’s command to “launch out into the deep” taught the Apostles—and the Church—that success in saving souls does not on human strength.
Christ’s command to “launch out into the deep” taught the Apostles—and the Church—that success in saving souls does not on human strength.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the miraculous draught revealed the spiritual law that success in apostolic work depends on grace, rather than human effort.
That apostolic effort, even when zealous and skilful, is fruitless without Christ’s presence and command.
Why Peter’s night of failure prepared him for a greater mission built on obedience, not self-reliance.
Coleridge shows us that Christ calls his ministers to act boldly under grace, trusting not results but his command.
For more context on this section, and its place in the Gospel and the Liturgy, see the previous part.
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
The Training of the Apostles, Part I
Chapter II
St. Luke v. 1—11
Story of the Gospels, § 37
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
Their joy at hearing Him
During this first year, indeed, of His Apostolical ministry, we may fairly suppose, as has been said, that He was received with a freshness and vigour of enthusiasm which were not to last. There may have been a more even tenour of great success than was to be seen afterwards.
But the issue of all such labour depends, in the first place, upon the various conditions of the souls to which it is addressed, and, in the second, on the secret counsel and choice of God, without a special drawing from Whom no one can come to our Lord. We may well feel sure that the Apostles had already witnessed much, in the reception of the teaching of our Lord by various persons and in different places, in which they might have seen a practical commentary on the picture which He afterwards drew in the Parable of the Sower.
Their own fishing, during the night which they had spent on the lake, may have reminded them of occasions when even He had seemed to cast His nets with but poor success. But all this was soon forgotten, for they had joined Him as He was about to teach, with the multitudes thronging to hear Him, crowding in breathless attention to the water’s edge, and forcing Him, as it were, to take refuge in the boat. Very gladly had Peter received his Master, and his disappointment sat lightly enough upon him as he listened to the words of eternal life from the lips of our Lord.
The word of God, even in the mouth of a teacher of ordinary sanctity or power, often kindles a glow of enthusiasm which, while it lasts, seems to transport those whom it affects altogether out of themselves, to make them breathe the air of Heaven rather than of earth, an atmosphere in which the truths of faith shine with the brightness and the beauty in which they are seen by the angels in the presence of God. It is an atmosphere of truth and purity, of lofty conceptions and heroic resolutions, of glowing love and conscious nearness to our Lord. We soon pass out of its influence; but to have lived but a short half-hour in the light and fervour which it kindles is in itself a grace which leaves the will strengthened and the mind illuminated with the strength and light of God.
If such is sometimes the fruit of the word of God, as it is spoken by His ministers in the Church, we may well imagine that a great instruction of our Lord to a large and eager crowd of simple and faithful souls must often have seemed to the Apostles to raise them to Heaven itself. We are told that, on another occasion like that of which we are speaking, when our Lord had been instructing the multitudes by the sea-shore, He was overpowered by fatigue at the close of His discourse, and we are thus able to draw a picture for ourselves of the energy, the animation, the force, the earnestness of His preaching.
No preaching is ever truly efficient in which the preacher does not throw his whole heart and soul, all his powers, mental and physical, into his work; but what must it have been when the preacher was the Incarnate Son, using the whole force and power of His Sacred Humanity for the promotion of the glory of God and the salvation of souls! In the case before us, the discourse of our Lord was to lead on to a display of marvellous power, of which, however, the Apostles, rather than the multitude, were to be the witnesses. It may even seem probable that it was partly for the purpose of retiring from the gaze of the crowd that our Lord bade St. Peter put out to sea, instead of landing from the boat and proceeding at once to the house which He made His home when in Capharnaum.
Peter was now to be rewarded, with that liberal magnificence with which our Lord always repays even the slightest services which are rendered to Him, for the shelter which he had afforded to his Master when He mounted the side of his boat. The reward was to be in the same kind with his disappointment of the night, while it was also to be full of instruction as to his future ministry in the Church, and to prepare him to enter with zeal and joy on the renewal of the work with our Lord from which he had been resting for the moment.
He was to learn from the issue of a fresh trial with his nets, under different conditions, what was to be the kind of toil for souls which God would bless with success. He had before laboured in vain, when all seemed to promise him success, as far as it could be secured by human skill and prudence; now he had our Lord with him, he was to launch out boldly where he had before fished in vain, and to let down his nets in the spirit of obedience and faith.
The command to launch out
Our Lord’s words to His Apostle seem to speak, as it were, to a heart full of enthusiasm, hope, and faith, and to suppose in him a readiness to catch the spiritual teaching which was founded on the analogy between the material fishing which he was bidden to undertake and the labour for the salvation of souls which was figured thereby. They seem to speak the language of parable, and even of prophecy, and this character is not confined to our Lord’s words, but seems to belong to the whole history of the incident.
The words ‘Launch out into the deep’ suggest a bold confident spirit of enterprise, and remind us of the similar words addressed to the same Apostle, at the time of his vision at Joppa, before he was sent to the formal admission of the Gentiles into the Church, in the person of Cornelius and his friends, and the voice came to him from Heaven, ‘Arise, Peter, kill and eat.’1 In each case the Apostle seems to be invited to vigorous action and venturesome enterprise, to cast aside all doubt and pusillanimity, even what might be reasonable prudence and moderation in his undertakings, if he had not a special call and encouragement and mission from on high.
He is to consider the power and authority of Him Who commands, rather than his own slender forces or the human probabilities of success. For all great works that are done for God must be done with courage and boldness, even though they are not to be undertaken without much counsel and prayer and forethought as to their method and aim, and it is almost a mark of the blessing which is to rest on them, that some human considerations and prejudices have to be set aside when they are taken in hand.
Human labour unable to command success
It is characteristic of all human enterprises that their results cannot be certainly secured.
They may be undertaken with the fairest prospects, the amplest means, the largest experience, the most practical skill. They may fail when all seems to promise success, or they may succeed when failure seemed their inevitable issue, but in no case can the issue be secured.
If so it is with undertakings which depend upon natural causes and forces, or which at the most have only the chances and changes of the natural elements, such as the weather and the like to oppose them, how far different must the case be in spiritual enterprises, in the work of those who are, or who would fain make themselves, fishers of men, labourers in the vineyard of the Lord! In other cases no one can be secure that the workers may not have to confess that, at the end of a night of toil, they have caught nothing.
This may be the lot of all human labour, of the toil of the brain as well as of the arm, of the man of science, or the statesman, of the searcher for truth, as well as the searcher for gold. Life is a struggle and a battle for all, and its prizes are as often given capriciously as won by fair industry and intelligence. But in any undertaking which has to deal with the soul of man, and the spiritual world by which it is surrounded, human labour and industry have no promise or chance of success at all.
The words of St. Peter are a motto which might be written at the head of the history of all such attempts, however honest and industrious, when the condition of the grace and blessing of Heaven has been wanting. ‘We have laboured all the night and taken nothing.’
The philosophers in their search for truth, the founders of sects and religions outside the Church, the missionaries who would convert the heathen, the mock hierarchies which attempt to do the work of the Church in nations already Christianized, all these, and others like them, may labour, and some to a great extent, in good faith, and yet they will take nothing.
And, as has been said, even the loyal and duly commissioned servants of the Church may often have to wait long for the reward of their labours, they may spend long nights, as it were, in toil, without success, even though there be wanting no condition on their part by which it might have been secured. For God, after all, keeps the issue in His own hands, as St. Paul says to the Corinthians, that he might plant, and Apollo might water, but God alone gave the increase.2
We find traces of this principle of God’s government even in our Lord’s own life, as in His want of success at Nazareth, and in the history of the Apostles, while it is continually illustrated in the lives of the saints.
These thoughts illustrate the first part of these words of St. Peter, while the words which follow illustrate the prompt confidence and obedience which are at once inspired by a clear command from God or from one who speaks in His name.
And how do those follow words illustrate this? Find out in the next part…
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The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
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Acts x. 13.
1 Cor. iii. 6.