Lectio Divina — Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
Day 3 of the Season of Creation
left
1. Lectio — Reading
> “…they left everything and followed him.”
— Luke 5:11
Peter has just experienced abundance beyond expectation. After a night of catching nothing, the nets are suddenly so full that they begin to tear and the boats nearly sink. Yet the astonishing conclusion is not that Peter finally possesses everything he wanted.
He left it.
The fish, nets and boats were not evil. They were good things. Peter’s livelihood was good. But when the good things became an obstacle to following the One who gave them, they had to be left behind.
That makes today’s Gospel uncomfortable because I can easily congratulate myself for what I have already left.
I have changed habits. I have surrendered things. I have made sacrifices. I have tried to simplify. But Peter does not merely leave something.
“They left everything and followed him.”
On this memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, I remember a man who knew something about leaving. Gregory came from privilege and public office, turned his family home into a monastery, and desired the contemplative life—only to be called away from even that cherished life to serve the Church as pope.
Sometimes following Christ means leaving bad things.
Sometimes it means leaving good things.
And sometimes it means leaving behind my preferred image of myself.
So the question that remains for me is remarkably simple:
What is left for me to leave?
[Luke 5:1–11 — USCCB](https://bible.usccb.org/bible/luke/5?1=&utm_source=chatgpt.com)
2. Meditatio — Meditation
At a recent weigh-in my doctor announced:
“Congratulations, you have graduated from being obese to overweight!”
There is something wonderfully humbling about being congratulated for becoming overweight.
I had made progress. Something had been left behind.
But quite literally, something was still left.
Fat.
That physical reality gives today’s Gospel an uncomfortable concreteness. I can celebrate how far I have come while avoiding the question Jesus places before me: What remains?
My body is not my enemy. That matters especially during this Season of Creation because the Christian understanding of creation leaves no room for despising matter. My body belongs to creation too.
Jesus certainly did not despise the material world. He ate. He drank. He attended meals and wedding celebrations. His critics even accused him of being “a glutton and a drunkard.” He was neither an ascetic who regarded creation as something filthy nor a consumer who regarded it as something to be devoured.
He received creation as gift.
Saint Gregory the Great likewise resisted the unhealthy dualisms that would separate spiritual life from bodily and material reality.
Perhaps, then, the fat I still have left to leave is not something that makes my body bad. Rather, it can become a visible reminder of the disorder that enters my relationship with good things when receiving becomes consuming and enjoyment loses its proper boundaries.
And that extends far beyond food.
During this Season of Creation, I can ask the same question about The Glenn.
What consumption is left for me to leave?
What waste?
What unnecessary energy use?
What dependence upon convenience?
What digital consumption?
What habits have I reduced without actually surrendering?
I need to be careful here. The goal cannot simply become a thinner version of myself. If weight loss becomes another exercise in vanity, control or self-importance, I may have left pounds without moving an inch closer to Christ.
Peter did not leave his nets simply to possess fewer nets.
He left them to follow Jesus.
That gives my own leaving its purpose.
I do not want merely to consume less.
I want to love more freely.
I do not want merely to weigh less.
I want whatever weighs down my discipleship to become lighter.
Perhaps what is left to leave is whatever prevents me from following Christ in greater harmony with my body, my neighbor and the rest of creation.
3. Oratio — Prayer
Lord Jesus, show me what is left for me to leave.
Through the prayers of Saint Gregory the Great, teach me neither to despise your gifts nor to be possessed by them. Free me from whatever weighs down my following of you.
Amen.
4. Contemplatio — Contemplation
Left.
Magnifica humanitas moves my reflection from what possesses me personally to what possesses us collectively.
The digital world promises abundance remarkably like Peter’s miraculous catch: more information, more communication, more entertainment, more efficiency and more possibilities than I could once have imagined.
The nets are overflowing.
But who owns the nets?
Control over platforms, data, infrastructure and computing power is increasingly concentrated among powerful technological and economic actors. They can influence what I see, what remains invisible, how I participate and even which choices appear available to me.
That makes today’s Gospel surprisingly contemporary.
Peter stands before an astonishing abundance and does something almost incomprehensible:
he leaves it.
He refuses to allow abundance to determine his purpose.
That is a freedom I need in the digital world as much as I need it at the dinner table.
I should ask whether I am actually using technology or whether the structures behind it are increasingly using me. Have I left enough space in my day for silence? Have I left room for contemplation? Have I left some decisions outside the reach of algorithms? Have I left enough independence to turn off a platform that is shaping me in ways contrary to the Gospel?
There is an intriguing connection between yesterday’s purpose and today’s left.
Unfortunately, Perezvon, my eldest LGD and the subject of yesterday’s Lectio Divina left his purpose of guarding sheep to wander. Perezvon needs boundaries so that he does not wander away from his purpose. I need boundaries too—not because the material or technological world is evil, but because good things without boundaries can gradually carry me somewhere I never intended to go.
The Season of Creation asks me to rediscover limits as something good.
Creation itself has limits.
My body has limits.
The Glenn has limits.
Technology should have limits.
Even my appetite must have limits.
And accepting those limits may require leaving something behind.
My doctor’s humorous congratulations reminds me that I have already left something. Today’s Gospel prevents me from becoming too satisfied with that accomplishment.
There is still something left.
Maybe there always will be.
The Christian life is not a single dramatic abandonment of the nets but a lifetime of discovering what I am still clutching while telling myself that I have surrendered everything.
Peter’s freedom begins when he realizes that even a boat overflowing with good things is worth leaving when Jesus is walking ahead.
So today I will not ask only, “What have I left?”
I will ask the harder question:
“Lord, what is left for me to leave so that I can follow you more freely?”
And then I must be willing to hear the answer.
Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church on Day 3 of the Season of Creation
