Facing Failure and Struggle in the Christian Life: Joining Peter in the Brotherhood of the Belt

Let's be honest, we will make wrong choices, we will fall, fail and face struggles in life. The only question is how we will respond. Will we get up - and allow these experiences to change us? Will we join Peter in this brotherhood of the belt?

Peter's wrong choices were not the end of the story of Gods plan for his life. Peter's denial crippled Peter emotionally and spiritually. He lost his way. That was until he encountered the Risen Christ. There, in that encounter, he allowed the belt of discipleship to be tied around him. It led him through life and pulled him even to death, on a cross, in imitation of the Savior whom he loved. We will lose our way as well. We will make wrong choices. We will fall. However, what matters most is what we do afterward. Will we respond to the invitations of grace to get up and begin again? Peter shows us the way into the brotherhood of the belt. By encountering the Risen Lord and letting him pull us forward and toward His loving plan in our own lives.

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - Among the Post-Resurrection accounts of Jesus in the New Testament, there is one from the Gospel of St John which challenges me the most. It comes at the end and involves an encounter between the Risen Jesus and Peter.

We are familiar with the first part:

"When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" Simon Peter answered him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."

He then said to Simon Peter a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Simon Peter answered him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." Jesus said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

Peter was distressed that Jesus had said to him a third time, "Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep".

However, it is what follows in this encounter between Peter and the Lord which has come to mean so much to me as I have grown older. I have shared a perspective on this text with many people I care about. Many were passing through difficult times. Others were trying to understand trouble and failure in the Christian life.

I wish to share it now with you, my readers.

Jesus continued speaking to Peter, "Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, follow me." (John 21:1-19)

Another translation says "when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will tie a belt around you and lead you where you do not want to go." It is from this translation that I have derived my expression, the brotherhood of the belt.

As the years have unfolded, this encounter between Peter and the Risen Lord has taken on a deeper meaning for me. Reflecting upon it invites me into an examination of how I respond to the struggle, failure, disappointment and difficulties which happen in daily life.

Let's be honest, we will make wrong choices, we will fall, fail and face struggles in life. The only question is how we will respond. Will we get up - and allow these experiences to change us? Will we join Peter in this brotherhood of the belt? Will we allow ourselves to be pulled along by the Lord - affirming that He knows what is best?

John's Gospel was the last to be written and reveals the mature reflections of the early Church concerning the deeper meaning of the Incarnation, life, death, resurrection and teaching of Jesus Christ the Messiah.

In his treatment of this post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, he focuses us on Peter for many reasons. The early Fathers of the Church drew beautiful insights from the three questions asked by the Risen Lord, as well as from Peters three fold response.

They taught that though this dialogue represented the undoing of his former threefold denial, it was also about much more. It was an affirmation of his specific call to leadership Peter would be given over the Church, the Body of Christ. It was about how he would die a martyrs death. It also shows the real mettle of the man. His response to Jesus becomes our invitation.
 
The encounter reaches down to the depths of the mystery of human freedom. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church so succinctly expresses "Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself" (CCC #1861) Sin is an abuse of freedom, a wrong choice.

Peter's wrong choices were not the end of the story of Gods plan for his life.

Peter's denial crippled Peter emotionally and spiritually. He lost his way. That was until he encountered the Risen Christ. There, in that encounter, he allowed the belt of discipleship to be tied around him. It led him through life and pulled him even to death, on a cross, in imitation of the Savior whom he loved.  

We will lose our way as well. We will make wrong choices. We will fall. However, what matters most is what we do afterward. Will we respond to the invitations of grace to get up and begin again? Peter shows us the way into the brotherhood of the belt. By encountering the Risen Lord and letting him pull us forward and toward His loving plan in our own lives.

The only path out of Peter's plight was repentance and, then, making a new choice - one rooted in faith and trust rather than fear and failure. The Risen Jesus came and stood in front of Him, gazing upon Him in love, showing Him the way of new life, inviting him into the brotherhood of the belt.

The same Risen Jesus does the same thing for each one of us.

When we choose against God, we choose against love, and we choose against our own human flourishing and happiness. When we make these kinds of wrong choices, we not only negatively affect the world around us, but we change who we become in the process.  

Our repentance invites us to make new choices and to begin again, and again, and again. It opens us up again to the way of love and fidelity. Grace makes it all possible. We are invited to exercise our freedom when we are faced with difficulties and struggles.

The right choice, the one always made possible by grace, is to choose the way of surrendered love, like the Apostle Peter did. To make the decision to join Peter, and all of the Saints, in the brotherhood of the belt. The right choice is always to say Yes to follow Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

I no longer want to get out ahead of the Lord at sixty years old. The Lord has tied a belt around me - and He is pulling me. I have found great freedom in in letting Him do so.  I know that relationship is right where I should be. It is where I want to stay, and live, and learn the Way.

What changes these days are not the circumstances that surround me - but the way I view them - and the manner in which I respond to their hidden invitations to conversion and discipleship. In short, I am changing; it is the kind of change that is not easy, but I know must happen. It is the path to true freedom.

What once seemed sour now tastes sweet to me. What once caused fear now invites me into a deepening call to living faith and loving surrender to Gods will. Perhaps you are having similar experiences in your own life?

If so, take Peter as an example.

Let go of any attempts to control. Join the brotherhood (or sisterhood) of the belt. Let Jesus pull you along in the way of surrendered love. There is no better way to live. Struggle, trouble and even failure in the Christian Life are a classroom. In that classroom we learn how to live in the brotherhood of the belt.

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Deacon Keith A. Fournier is Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Common Good Alliance. A married Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, he and his wife Laurine have five grown children and seven grandchildren. He is a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties and has long been active at the intersection of faith and culture.  He is a senior contributing writer to The Stream.

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