In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, we find our Lord on the shores of Lake Gennesarat. Because of the pressing crowds of people, He got into a small fishing boat and had the boat’s owner, the Apostle Peter, push out from the shore a short distance. From the boat, our Lord preached to the people that had assembled all about. And now that His teaching was finished, He asked the Apostle Peter to cast out into the deeper parts of the lake so that they might cast their nets for fish.

Peter, an experienced fisherman, replied that they had been fishing all night and caught nothing… now that it was day there was little chance that they would catch anything – for nighttime was the time for catching the fish. Nevertheless, Peter exclaimed, ‘At Thy word, I will let down the net.’ In other words, ‘Thy will be done’. Against what might be considered, in worldly terms, his better judgment, Peter was willing to subject himself to the will of the Lord. So they cast off from their place near the shore and went out into the deeper waters of the lake and, at Christ’s word, they let down their nets. The Gospel tells us that the nets were so full of fish that they could hardly bring them into the boat. They called to the other fisherman to quickly bring their boats over to help them with the miraculous haul of fish.

One of the key lessons that we learn from today’s Holy Gospel is the power and importance of submitting ourselves to the will of God. Our pride and self-will are the root cause of so many of our sins and miseries. And yet, we cling to them so jealously.

St Silouan of Mt Athos wrote, ‘The proud and self-willed do not want to surrender to God's will because they like their own way, and that is harmful for the soul.... The proud man likes to be his own master, and does not see that man has not wisdom enough to guide himself without God.’

When we live our lives dictated by our pride and self-will, it inevitably sets us up to become frustrated or angry or despondent when things don’t go our way. St Silouan goes on to tell us, ‘The man who is discontented with his lot and murmurs against his fate, or against those who cause him offense, should realize that his spirit is in a state of pride, which has taken from him his sense of gratitude toward God. But, if it be so with you, do not lose heart but try to trust firmly in the Lord, and ask Him for a humble spirit, and when the lowly Spirit of God comes to you, you will then love Him, and be at rest in spite of all afflictions.’

Our modern minds tend to equate humility with weakness and pride with strength. This is completely upside down. What requires more strength... to keep silent in the face of an offense or to let your anger flow out in rage? Allowing ourselves to be slaves to our passions of anger, lust, arrogance, and all the rest comes naturally to our fallen state. Fighting against these passions is a truly heroic act of strength.

This humble submission to the will of God is no easy task. We are fearful that we must be the ones in control – if we are not in control, then the only other alternative is that things must then be ‘out of control’. This is not true… When we acknowledge and submit to the will of God in our lives, we are not casting things into chaos, we are handing things into far more capable hands.

St John of Kronstadt, in his beautiful spiritual diary ‘My Life in Christ’ writes:

‘It is never so difficult to say from the heart, ‘Thy Will be done, Father,’ as when we are in sore affliction or grievous sickness, and especially when we are subjected to the injustice of men, or the assaults and wiles of the enemy. It is also difficult to say from the heart ‘Thy Will be done’ when we ourselves were the cause of some misfortune, for then we think that it is not God’s Will, but our own will, that has placed us in such a position, although nothing can happen without the Will of God. In general, it is difficult to sincerely believe that it is the Will of God that we should suffer, when the heart knows both by faith and experience that God is our blessedness; and therefore it is difficult to say in misfortune, ‘Thy Will be done.’ We think, ‘Is it possible that this is the Will of God? Why does God torment us? Why are others quiet and happy? What have we done? Will there be an end to our torments?’ And so on. But when it is difficult for our corrupt nature to acknowledge the Will of God over us, that Will of God without which nothing happens, and to humbly submit to it, then is the very time for us to humbly submit to this Will, and to offer to the Lord our most precious sacrifice—that is, heartfelt devotion to Him, not only in the time of ease and happiness, but also in suffering and misfortune; it is then that we must submit our vain erring wisdom to the perfect Wisdom of God, for our thoughts are as far from the thoughts of God ‘as the heavens are higher than the earth’...

This great treasure of the will of God acting in and through us is spoken of in the Epistle we heard today. Apostle Paul writes: ‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.’ We lay aside our earthly understanding in favor of God’s heavenly perspective and understanding.

Taking Apostle Paul’s analogy of us being earthly vessels, think of all of our thoughts, our plans, our ambitions, our egos as the stuff that fills up our earthen vessel, the bucket of our life. God offers us His grace and His light – but as long as our earthen vessel is filled with so much of our stuff, there is little room for His grace to act upon our lives. We have to work on clearing out our vessels, on cleaning up this bucket filled with so much stuff. In surrendering these things to God, we make room in our earthen vessels to take in the treasure of the grace and light of God. 

It is the life of Jesus which is eternal, which is pure, which is the life of victory and joy. This is the life that God offers to us. We are invited to exchange a life of selfish interest which leads to decay and ruin, for a life of selfless love which leads to such an outpouring of love that our vessels cannot even contain it!  

May God grant us the wisdom and the courage and the trust demonstrated by the Apostle Peter in today’s Gospel… setting aside our pride and worldly wisdom to say ‘Thy will be done.’