The Infinite Fulfillment of Desire - Homily for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost (2025)

“God is the infinite fulfillment of our desire, both in this life and in eternity,” thus writes St. Ignaty Brianchaninov. Unlike Buddhism, Christianity does not see desire as the root of all suffering, but rather sin. God created us to desire Him and implanted in our hearts an infinite desiring capacity to be able to contain Him insofar as we are able. But in the Fall, man turned away from God and chose to satisfy his desires not for spiritual delights, but for fleshly ones. In our own sinfulness we see our desire for the temporal trump the eternal. 

Christ came to draw us back to Himself. We stopped looking up to heaven, so the One from Heaven came down to earth. In every one of Christ’s actions in the Gospels we see the condescension and lovingkindness of our Savior.

Today we hear of the miraculous catch of fish when Christ begins His public ministry. Many of the disciples were fishermen, so Christ catches them in their own profession, and blesses their earthly work in order to show that He will also bless the heavenly work He is calling them to.

However, Christ did not come to make fishermen better fishermen. He did not come to make tax-collectors more friendly and approachable. He did not come to make scribes and the rulers of the temple more knowledgeable and fastidious. He came to make the dead to live. He came to give men life, and life more abundantly. Christ wanted to make the fishermen fishers of men. And to get them to trust Him, to get them to understand that He is the one Who will assist them in what He is calling them to, He gave them this sign. He gave them the sign of a net so weighed down with fish that the boats were in danger of sinking. He gave them this sign so they’d never forget the absolute gratuity of God’s gifts.

So we see in today’s Gospel something similar to what happens to most of us at some point in our lives. It’s not uncommon for those when first converting to Orthodoxy, when first beginning the monastic life, or when first waking out of years or decades of lukewarm indifference to the faith if not outright wallowing in sin, to have a miraculous catch of God’s grace, if you will. It’s not unusual to have miracles occur, to have serious temptations and falls into sin to cease, or for prayer to be sweet and attractive. God does these things because He is good and He loves us deeply and infinitely and He is desperately trying to drag us away from our sinfulness.

God did not come to make us successful. He did not come to help us become better cooks, better carpenters, better businessmen and better physicians. He did not come to make us wealthier or more efficient. He came to lift us out of the hell we created for ourselves in our hearts and to give us an opportunity, if we choose to use it, to be united to Him. When He gives us a miraculous catch of His grace, so to speak, He is giving us a miraculous bounty of Himself. He is presenting Himself in His divine energies to us, to show us a glimpse of what it feels like not to be drowning in sin, not to have our minds scattered amidst all our anxieties and desires.

So how are we to respond to this grace? The thing we tend to miss the first time something like this happens to us (and honestly, also the second, and third and perhaps almost every time this happens) is that this is grace. It’s not us. So often, many of us are overjoyed to finally be released from the grip of a besetting sin, to have some real peace with people in our life we don’t get along with, to actually be able to pray and mean it, we forget that this is a gift.

So we will think we’ve finally figured out the spiritual life and everything from now on is smooth sailing. This triumphalism quickly gives way to judgment of others—we see others struggling and imagine that if they would just do what we do, they wouldn’t be in the situation they’re in. If they’d just finally come to understand things the way we do (and we tell ourselves it’s really quite easy to do this), then they would have the peace and success that we have. And in our pride and gloating over the supposed worse spiritual state of those around us, grace slips away. And before we know it, we are back to where we were before, except now wounded from the fall, surprised that what felt so natural to us, to pray with feeling, to resist sins, to be at peace with others, is now an impossibly unattainable goal.

So what are we to do instead? Let us look again at the Gospel and the words of St. Peter in response to this great miracle. “When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). We see St. Peter’s utter humility, and this at the beginning of Christ’s ministry! He started at a more exalted place than we did and without the gift of the Holy Spirit that we were given in baptism. He had to wait three more years for that. If he wanted to, he could have forgotten that it was at Jesus’ command that he laid down the nets again. If he were proud, he could ascribe his success with his own perseverance and fishing know-how. If he were greedy, he could start planning to buy newer nets, bigger boats to go on more extravagant expeditions.

But the holy Apostle was none of those things. He was a humble man and in the face of the overwhelming grace of God, his heart was broken. He understood his sinfulness and how unworthy of God’s visitation He was. Here we see a man continuing in the line of righteous Job, who after his encounter with God states categorically, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). And we see that Peter’s humility was not false because his heart was not hardened in despair. At Christ’s word “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men” (Luke 5:10), he forsook all and followed Him.

He left the nets with the fish. He didn’t want tasty food, earthly success or wealth. He wanted Christ. In encountering Christ, he saw himself as he really was and that only in Christ could he be who he was truly called to be. He understood, if only vaguely at first, but later clearly, that Christ is his food, Christ is his wealth, Christ is his success. We will not understand what this truly means until we are willing to leave behind what is distracting us from Christ. Whatever we give up for Christ’s sake will be returned to us a hundredfold, not just in the next life, but in this as well. It might be painful to give up our addictions, our passions, our supposed control over things, but in exchange Christ will give us true peace. Christ will give us Himself to replace all that.

Finally, for those who have checked out of this sermon; for those who find themselves in a spiritual desert and any mention of the visitation of God’s grace is met with chagrin; for those whose memories of any special condescension on God’s part have become distant memories, take heart! God is with us in the spiritual deserts of our lives as well. If we were truly abandoned by God, we would not know that we were in fact in a desert and we would be content with our carnal way of life. If we were truly abandoned by God, we would not be here. It is God’s grace that sustains us even when we feel like we’ve been running on empty for weeks, or months, or years. Even in such dire straits and hopelessness that we find ourselves, Christ is still calling to us, “Fear not! Come, follow me!” Amen.