Homily given at St. Ann's in Ancaster on the Third Sunday of Easter. John 21:1-14
Fr. Adam Voisin's Stuff
Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter
In this beautiful, really magnificent gospel passage from St. John today, we have the disciples gathered around Peter, fishing. From the very earliest days, the church fathers, the earliest commentators on this passage have seen in this event, an image of the church itself, the boat represents the church. In fact, you kind of hear this language of the church as boat in many ways. We often refer to the church itself as the bark of Peter, the boat of Peter. Inside a church building, we call this the "nave," right? The main body of the church, the "nave," you've probably heard that, comes from the Latin word "navis," which means boat. And many churches, just like this one, are deliberately designed with a ceiling like this one here, that looks like the underside of a hall to kind of convey that image of a boat. The church is the bark of Peter, and we are in that boat like the disciples with Peter, with the Holy Father, his successor, the Pope. And we hear in Luke's gospel that Peter is given a commission to be a fisher of people, a fisher of men. We are all given that same commission. At the end of the gospel of Matthew, we hear that Jesus sends them out with this task of proclaiming the gospel of baptizing, of bringing all people to the Lord to Him through the church. That's our task. And this isn't just the call of evangelization, it's not just to expand the membership of the church. It's not to make our club the biggest and the best. It's to bring people to Jesus Christ. Look at what happens in the gospel today. The disciples have gone out fishing. They're undertaking this task, where after the time of the resurrection, they've gone out fishing, and they catch this miraculous catch of fish, and they don't leave it in the boat, they don't go sell it, they bring it to Jesus. They bring the fish to Jesus. It's what we're called to do, to bring others to the Lord Jesus through the church, through the bark of Peter. We hear that the net was not torn. The church's fathers even saw in that an image that the church is not meant to be torn. The church is not meant to be divided, separated, but no matter how many fish we catch, no matter how many people are in it, we are all to be united together. We're told that the disciples went out fishing at night. In John's gospel, light and darkness have deep meaning. For John, darkness is a symbol of the world without God. We hear that in the very beginning of his gospel, that the eternal word, the logos, came into the world to be its light, and that the darkness has not overcome it. The darkness is the world without God. The disciples have gone fishing at night. They've gone fishing, you could say, without God. They've not incorporated him in their plans. How often do we go fishing at night? How often do we undertake our good works, our apostolates? We try to do many good things. At night, we don't include the Lord God in our plans. We often don't do this deliberately. We don't deliberately set out on a good work and say, "Lord, I don't want you to have anything to do with this good work." That would be crazy, right? We don't do it that way, but we don't include Him to the full extent that's possible very often. We depend on our own efforts. We depend on our own ingenuity, our own strength, our own work ethic, our own planning. If only I figure out the right way, think of it. When we say we have someone that we think, "I'd like to share the gospel with this person, maybe a co-worker, maybe a family member, a friend, whoever it is." Then what do we do? We think, "Well, how will I do it? What will I have to learn all these things? I'm going to figure out the right way, and then I'm going to say things properly, and I'm going to wait for this moment. We'll go for a coffee." We do all this big planning. We often forget to pray, to invite the Lord into that good work, into that apostolate. The problem is without Him, we can do nothing. Christ tells us that very thing. He says, "Without Me, you can do nothing." He didn't say, "Without Me, it's tough. Without Me, you won't be able to do as much, but without Me, you can do nothing." If we don't invite the Lord, if He isn't really a part of all of our plans, they will always be impoverished and effective. How do we unlock the power of His grace to really transform all of our good works into His good works? So that really, it's Him doing. It isn't that what we want. We want Him to be doing all of His good things through us, that whatever we do, we want really to be His hands, His feet, His voice in the world. Listen to what Blessed John Paul II said about this in one of his documents, one I've quoted quite a few times, "Novo millenio en eunte." He says, "There is a temptation." He's referring to what comes now as a temptation, something bad, right? There's a temptation which perennially besets every spiritual journey and pastoral work. Every one of them, we all face this temptation. That of thinking that the results depend on our ability to act and to plan, God of course asks us really to cooperate with His grace and therefore invites us to invest all our resources of intelligence and energy in serving the cause of the kingdom, but He continues, it is fatal to forget that without Christ we can do nothing. So He goes on then to talk about how do we get things going on? How do we resist this temptation? He says, "It is prayer, it is prayer which roots us in this truth." It constantly reminds us of the primacy of Christ and in union with Him, the primacy of the interior life and of holiness. And this principle is not respected, is it any wonder that pastoral plans come to nothing and leave us with a disheartening sense of frustration? How do you think the disciples in that boat felt a fishing all night tired, frustrated? I'm a fisherman myself and I know that experience well, because normally that's what my fishing amounts to, catching nothing. So I understand that frustration and in our own pastoral works and in our own apostolate, it's not the case very often, we try to do good things, but what do we have to show for it? Through prayer we cultivate our interior spiritual life, which is really just another way of saying our friendship with Jesus Christ, our deep communion and union with Him and listen to that language, our union with Jesus Christ, that's what we want, it's what we need, because united to Him, He's able to do His works through us. Jesus Christ is able to act and in and through us to the extent that we are united with Him, to the extent that we have this deep spiritual life, this interior life of deep prayer. Saint Paul experienced this himself and he talks about it in his letter to the Galatians, he says, "It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." There it is again, Christ Himself acting and living through Saint Paul. We are all called to this deep prayer, to this deep union with God to be saints, it's not just for priests, it's not just for religious and nuns, but for each one of us. Often we think, "Well, I'll get to it later on, I'm busy now, but Father, I've got three kids and I'm busy and I don't have time to pray." I'll wait until I'm retired, then I'll have more time. My life isn't so busy, I'll wait until work isn't so busy, I'll wait for some other time, you put it off and off and off. We're called to holiness now, today, no matter where we're at and it's within our reach. And it's true that our lives do get really busy and we'll never find time for prayer, our lives are too busy for prayer, that's why we have to make the time, we have to carve it out of our already busy day because it's important, because it's like one of those other important things we do throughout our day. Let's go back to the Gospel and look what happens. Jesus gives them this very simple command, put the net on the other side. It doesn't say go to the other side of the lake, you know, you're fishing at the wrong time, no, just put it on the other side of the boat. And the disciples who have fished unsuccessfully all night, put the net on the other side of the boat and they pull in a whole net of fish, as much as that net can hold. Then we have this scene that I find particularly intriguing and beautiful and really worthy of meditation. John, the disciple whom Jesus loves, that's how he's referred to throughout the Gospel, he has to tell Peter, it's the Lord, it is the Lord. See, Peter didn't recognize it, Peter didn't recognize the Lord, he didn't recognize the action of the Lord, he needs John to tell him, John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the friend of Jesus, the one who represents this deep prayer, this communion with God, he's the one who recognizes the action of Jesus Christ. Peter I love, Peter is a man of action. Peter is impulsive, Peter is strong, Peter is enthusiastic, Peter loves the Lord, but he's not a mystic yet. So that's how he doesn't recognize him. So Peter John says, looks over to Peter, it's the Lord and I love what Peter does. He jumps into the water and swims ashore, he's in love with the Lord, but he needed to be told it is the Lord. Perhaps in each one of us we find a little bit of Peter and a little bit of John, don't we? We want to be people of action, we want to do good things for the Lord, maybe we're even impulsive, maybe we put our foot in our mouth, who knows? We want to do good things for the Lord, but we also need John within us. We also need this deep friendship with Jesus so that we know it is the Lord and we know that in two ways, hey we know how important it is that the Lord be the one doing the work through us, but then when things happen, when the good things happen, we see those little miracles in our lives taking place, we recognize it is the Lord who's doing them, not me. We can recognize his action. It's only through this deep commitment to prayer, a serious commitment to daily prayer each day, that we deepen this union with Jesus, that we become truly united with him, that he becomes able to act through us, that it's no longer us who live, but him who acts through us and will see truly that in all of the good works we do, all of the good that happens, it is the Lord.