“I go a fishing”
One of the Apostles said this. Can you guess who? Right you are; it was Peter. Not many days hence he would have more important things to say — and do — after receiving the Holy Ghost at Pentecost.
Chapter twenty-one of Saint John’s Gospel is one of my favorites. It is so innocent and human. And I don’t mean only the words of the Fisherman, but the words and actions of the Savior Himself.
After laboring all night, the Apostles who went out fishing with Peter had caught nothing, not one fish. When the sun rose, they were no doubt tired and sad, maybe even bored.
As they prepare to call it quits they see a Man walking on the shore. The Man calls out to them: “Children, have you any meat”? Not knowing who it was, they said, “No.” He then says to them: “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you shall find.” Can you imagine the look they must have given to each other? First, the Stranger calls them by the familiar term “Children” and then He tells them to do what they must have done several times already during the night. Ah, what liberty He gives! These are His friends now, no longer servants. More than friends, they are His children. This is not the first time Jesus called His Apostles “Children”. At the Last Supper He called them even “Little Chidren”.
I could stop right here. It is enough to think about.
In any event, we know the rest of the story. They did as the Man on the shore told them to do. Did they recognize His voice? The Gospel does not say that they did. Yet, there must have been something about the Man that moved them to do what He said. Immediately their net was full, loaded with, as we shall soon see, 153 fish.
Who was it that recognized the Lord after the miraculous draught? John the Beloved. Innocence responds to Innocence Itself. But Peter, the repentant denier, jumps into the water and swims to shore. I like to think that he wanted a few moments alone with the Master because, Saint Thomas Aquinas says, Peter loved Jesus the most.
I only wish to comment on one more thing that struck me as this story begins. It is simply what Jesus is doing before they pull in the net. Do you remember? He had struck up a fire with coals and was frying one fish, and He had bread. He was preparing, or pre-preparing, a meal. More meat would be coming.
Jesus had a plan. I do not think He plucked the fish there and then from the water and created bread out of thin air. I think He came to the lake with the fish and bread in His satchel. Yes, that is what I think.
What does this tell us? It tells us that our Lord, as Man, had plenty of experience starting up a fire and cooking. He was ahead of the game. All His disciples had to do was throw more fish on the flames and partake of the bread that Jesus had brought with Him. What a beautiful human scene this is, is it not?
“Children”! We are the children of God and “children of the Bridegroom”. “Little children,” Saint John writes to the Church in his first epistle, “love one another” (1 John 3:18, and 1 John 4:7).
