Dear Friends,
It’s wonderful to see how the Lord always looks for the apostles. On the Easter night he came through the doors that were locked and the week after he allowed Thomas to touch his wounds and today, we see him at the shore of the sea of Galilee. They don’t look for him, but he is the one always searching for them, and for us. It’s something beautiful to behold. He doesn’t accuse them of anything and only wishes them peace and joy.
Today Peter says, “I’m going fishing.” It could be the first time that he has done so since he left everything to follow the Lord. But now he wants to go back to his old job. What is he really saying? The fishing is a symbol of his old life. Maybe he considered the three years a waste, or a disappointment. He wants to return to the things that give him security. Peter says I am going fishing and the others follow. Don’t we do the same? We are like the proverb that says: the dog returns to its vomit. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a dog do that; it is something disgusting. How easy it us for us to return to our old sins when suddenly things go bad for us.
Here Our Lord is really showing that he is risen. What an experience of death, disappointment, and failure they had the night before. They caught nothing. The sea is also a symbol of death that they experienced. And they see a man on the beach who asks them a very stupid question. Have you caught anything? But let’s take this question seriously. It’s like asking someone have you given up that habit of speaking badly of people? Did you still look lustfully at the wife on another? Have you been able to leave that bad habit that you had last year? And our answer is the same: NO!
This man on the beach which they don’t recognize as Christ then asks them to do something totally crazy, totally illogical! It’s already morning, the sun is up, they caught nothing all night long, and he says throw your nets to the right of the boat. And they obey him not even knowing who he is. And they have a huge catch of fish that overwhelms them. How do they know it’s the Lord? From the great number of fish. Up to that point they had nothing, only disappointment. They were not able to do anything. This amazing miracle is breaking their schemas, their projections about how their life or their spouse or whatever should be.
If we want to overcome the situation of death in front of us, whatever gives us anxiety, or leads us to be afraid, it is necessary to obey, even the advice that appears totally crazy to us. Christ always sends someone to us, an angel, a catechist, a priest, a child, and the crazy thing that that person says can make it easy for us to change. It leads us to do something we thought was totally impossible. This can happen only if Christ is present. He wants to have dominion over our life. So that we could experience this joy of the resurrection today, especially when we are confronted by something that seems impossible for us.