Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing."
They said to him, "We also will come with you."
Although they had seen the risen Lord and been given the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins it did not necessarily preclude the necessity that they provide for their daily needs. After being called to leave their nets, at the beginning of their lives as disciple,s there was a clear and well defined center to their lives in the presence of Jesus himself. But after the resurrection Jesus was more unpredictable, appearing, as it often seemed, when they least expected it. Before his death they typically knew where he was and how to find he. But after the resurrection it seemed to be more often, if not always the case that it was he himself who found them. They probably did not know how to integrate that into their daily lives. They knew they were intended to carry out his mission and follow him. But that seemed much more ambiguous in the light of the mode of his resurrection appearances. Did they resort to fishing because they couldn't make heads or tails of what their commitment to Jesus now meant? Or was it merely a preparatory step along the way toward some more explicitly Christocentric goal?
So they went out and got into the boat,
but that night they caught nothing.
We can't help but feel that things would have been different somehow if they were more able to involve the risen Lord and their daily concerns. This is not to say that the presence of Jesus guaranteed perpetual success. But his presence was proof against long nights of lonely and isolated frustration. All of the feelings they might have experienced in the absence of Jesus, fault, failure, and inadequacy, could have been conquered by the peace that his presence conveyed. And it is a surety that disciples would meet whatever success Jesus intended them to have sooner by being attentive to his voice than otherwise.
When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore;
but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
They felt that they had been alone in the boat. The longer the night dragged on without a catch they more their frustration grew, as well as the sense of the trip as a failure. But Jesus revealed himself at that particular moment in the morning to demonstrate that he was entirely aware of their plight, that it had not escaped his eyes. The consequence of this was that, if he had such knowledge, they need not have ever felt alone or abandoned. Even before he revealed himself in the morning they could have called to him in the night.
So he said to them, "Cast the net over the right side of the boat
and you will find something."
Doing life together with Jesus was always preferable to trying to do it alone. Even though the post resurrection world in which we live means we don't necessarily see him with our eyes it does not mean he has abandoned us. Like the disciples, we too have received his Holy Spirit. And like them, we are meant to listen to the guidance of the voice of Jesus conveyed to us by his Spirit. We may still have to live the same life and doing many of the same things we did before we knew the risen Lord. But they all receive an entirely new aspect when we do them in the light of his presence and his love. Even when we do go out alone into the night of frustration we know that we can still look to the morning and the appearance of Jesus himself, since, "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning" (see Psalm 30:5).
So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore
full of one hundred fifty-three large fish.
Even though there were so many, the net was not torn.
When we listen the the voice of the Lord our lives receive a unifying character, directed toward mission, and to the Kingdom. Even our preparation of breakfast can become, in turn, a preparation for evangelism. As we try to do life together with Jesus he becomes the central point where we bring both our insufficiency and our abundance, our joy and our sorrow, all of which he uses for the Kingdom. He himself desires that the Church be an untorn net full of fish of every kind. And he in turn uses fishers of all kinds to do his work. It is work we need never do alone since he is always watching and waiting on the shore. We will experience this presence ourselves, much as the disciples did, in a Eucharistic feast.
Jesus said to them, "Come, have breakfast."
And none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?"
because they realized it was the Lord.
Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them,
and in like manner the fish.
This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples
after being raised from the dead.
Darrell Evans - Trading My Sorrows
Ron Kenoly - Ancient Of Days
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