When the Apostles heard Jesus, they were filled with peace. Then Peter addressed to Jesus a request full of boldness and courage: Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the waters. And the Master, who was still a few meters from the boat, answered him: Come. Peter had great faith, and exchanged the security of the boat for confidence in the Lord's words: getting out of the boat, he began to walk on the water towards Jesus. These were impressive moments of steadfastness and love.
But Peter stopped looking at Jesus and looked more at the difficulties around him, and seeing that the wind was so strong, he became afraid. He forgot for a moment that the strength that sustained him in the midst of the water did not depend on circumstances, but on the will of the Lord, who dominates heaven and earth, life and death, nature, the winds, the sea.... Peter began to sink, not because of the state of the sea, but because of his lack of trust in the One who can do all things. And he cried out to Jesus, "Lord, save me! And immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and held him and said, "You of little faith, why did you doubt? Christ is the firm handhold to which we must cling in moments of weakness or weariness, when we see that we are sinking. Lord, save me," we will tell him forcefully in our prayer.
At times, the Christian stops looking to Jesus and fixes his attention on other things that take him away from God and put him in danger of losing footing in his life of faith and of sinking, if he does not react promptly. From the moment that someone begins to see his faith or the vocation received from God as unclear, "let him examine himself faithfully. He will not fail to discover that for some time his life of piety is somewhat relaxed, prayer is more rare or less attentive, and he is less demanding of himself. Does he not renew a sin whose seriousness he deliberately conceals from himself? Surely he no longer represses his passions with the same energy, if he does not indulge in any of them with complacency. A resentment fomented against another, a matter of interest in which our honesty is not total, a friendship too absorbing, or simply the awakening of base instincts which are not fairly promptly rejected, it takes no more than that to raise clouds between God and us. And faith is obscured. There is a danger, then, of blaming this guilty situation on external circumstances, when the evil is rather in one's own heart.
To get out of it, Peter only had to grasp the strong hand of the Lord, his Friend and his God. Although little, the disciple had to do something on his part. It is the collaboration of the good will that God always asks of us. "When God our Lord grants men his grace, when he calls them with a specific vocation, it is as if he stretches out a hand to them, a paternal hand full of strength, full above all of love, because he seeks us one by one, as his daughters and sons, and because he knows our weakness. The Lord waits for us to make the effort to take his hand, that hand that he draws near to us: God asks us to make an effort, a proof of our freedom "6.
This small effort that the Lord asks of his disciples of all times to pull them out of a bad situation can be very diverse: to intensify prayer; to be more sincere and docile in spiritual direction; to remove a bad occasion; to obey with promptness and docility of heart; to put, together with prayer, some human means that are within our reach, even if they are very small.... Together with Christ all battles are won, but we must have unbounded trust in Him. "Pray assuredly with the Psalmist: "Lord, You are my refuge and my fortress, I trust in You!".
"I guarantee that He will preserve you from the insidiousness of the "meridian demon"-in temptations and.... in the falls - when age and virtues should be mature, when you should know by heart that He alone is the Fortress".
Hablar con Dios