14 April 2023
Friday in the Octave of Easter
Jesus visits the fisherman at the shore in today’s Gospel. After a long night of work, they have caught nothing. Jesus comes and invites them to try one more time to catch fish. Exhausted, and probably a bit surprised and disgruntled by this request of an unknown bystander, the disciples toss in their nets one final time. Because of this final toss they reel in a miraculous haul of fish and, by this simple miracle, recognize the presence of the Lord.
An insight for our lives from this passage is that sometimes the greatest moments come at the point when our natural efforts have proved seemingly unfruitful or where our labors have not yet produced the expected results. It is here, if we can muster the strength to throw out our nets one more time, that we invite the Lord to work wonders in our lives, our ministry, and our prayer. Let us, then, resist the temptation to give up too soon, to lose hope that certain hearts might never come back to the Lord, and instead, with faith and trust in the power of the Resurrected Christ, let us keep fishing on behalf of Christ and entrust the catch into his hands. Our acts of faith, hope, and trust in our ministry will yield a great catch through God’s grace if we cultivate the grace of perseverance and hope in our labors. Let us never tire of working with the Lord for God’s glory this Easter Season.