Living the faith is simple—but hard

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 18, 2025

Living out the Catholic faith is simple. Not easy—far from it—but simple, as in uncomplicated.

Our Lord, challenged to name the greatest of God’s commandments, replied: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt 22: 37-39) Those commandments are simple enough to understand, although not so easy to fulfill.

Impossible, in fact. We fallen beings simply aren’t capable of giving God all of our hearts and souls and minds. Selfish motives inevitably creep into our minds. Yet St. Paul assures us that with the help of Jesus, “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13)

In today’s Gospel (Mt 14:22-33), provides us with an example of how to rely on Jesus—and also an example of what happens when we lose our focus on the Lord:

He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Peter, when he places his confidence entirely on Jesus, walks on water! But then a distraction creeps into his consciousness; the waves worry him. (Logically speaking, someone who is walking on water—already doing something that is humanly impossible—should not be overly concerned about waves. But then our distractions are often illogical; the Deceiver sometimes has great success with the silliest of tricks.)

So Peter’s superhuman feat ends in a pratfall. Still the story has a happy ending, because Peter regains his full focus on Jesus when he yells, “Lord, save me!” And the Lord “immediately” solves the problem—which of course was not the waves but the lack of faith.

It is that lack of faith, not a lack of knowledge, that causes or failures. Peter knew what to do: if he relied entirely on Jesus he could walk on water. But then distracted (tempted) he did not rely entirely on Jesus; he began forming his own plans to deal with the waves—plans that would have failed, naturally, because human beings, left to their own devices, cannot walk on water, with or without the complication of waves.

Our own failures to live out our Catholic faith are rarely caused by our ignorance. We know what to do; we just don’t do it. St. Paul was painfully familiar with the phenomenon: “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Rom 7:18-19)

What causes those failures? Sin, St. Paul tells us. For which the remedy is, once again, complete reliance on the Lord’s mercy. “Lord, save me!”

Yesterday I was struck by Amy Welborn’s reflections on synodality:

Having years of meetings on “synodality” is, at root, a way for people to feel as if they are doing churchy things without actually doing the hard work of face-to-face evangelization and sharing the Works of Mercy with their actual neighbors.

It is a phenomenon we see all the time on the parish level. It’s an expression of a temptation any of us might feel: sharing the love of Jesus in person is *hard* and uncomfortable. Let’s have a meeting about it instead. I may complain about it, but it sure is easier and, in the end, requires less, you know, sacrifice.

Synodality, I have been told (in one of countless earnest attempts to define the word), is a new way of living out our Catholic faith. My point here is that we don’t really need a new way to live out our faith. We don’t need to discover how it’s done; we don’t need to talk about it. We just need to do it.

It’s hard. But it’s simple.