“THE DEEPNESS OF CHRIST’S LOVE”
Saint Luke 5: 1-11
5th Sunday After Trinity: 26 June Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
“O God Who hast prepared for them that love Thee such good things as pass man’s understanding…” What things?
Evening Supper? Roasted fresh fish? Is having the belly filled all there is? Stuff and more stuff?
Christ didn’t so much “perform” miracles, as He is no illusionist or stage magician, as He allowed His Divinity on chosen occasions to shine forth in gracious love—demonstrating Who He was and what He came to do!
No general contractor or IT manager; no nurse, fire fighter, or seamstress wants some “know-it-all” dilettante to instruct them or correct them constantly. They’ve been plying their trades and vocations through “thick and thin” and know their “art.” The same applies for pastors, disciples, Apostles, and Fishermen like James, John, Andrew, and Simon!
Peter was a fisherman’s fisherman and He didn’t need a Rabbi instructing him how and where to catch fish on a lake that he knew like the back of his calloused hands! But The Word works. The Word gives what it demands. Repent and Believe!
Peter acts according to the Lord’s Words and The great catch of fish is the result.
Marvel not that God can make fish come and go at His desire. Christ could have made the fish jump out of the sea and fly around His Sacred Head singing the Te Deum had He so wished it. But The Lord’s signs are just that—SIGNS of The Incarnated Messiah in the flesh to draw His people to Himself that they might receive the real meal of mercy—not fish—but The Lamb of God.
Peter understood the whole point of that incident. The Holy Spirit showed him that this Nazarene teacher was not just wise and generous, but that He was God—The Living Christ. Struck by his own sins and his own sinful heart he was constrained to his knees in repentance: “depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Jesus absolves him: “fear not” or colloquially “Peace” I forgive you Peter. I have not come to catch you in trespasses and consign you to the fire but to loose you and install you as My very own fisher of men.
And it came to pass on the 26th of June Anno + Domini 2016, that people pressed upon Christ to hear the Word of God. The Holy Ghost has called you by the Gospel—converted you by Christ the Word and His work for you. He stands as always in the Lake of Gennesaret located in the Holy + Font. His two ships of Hebrew and Greek Scripture containing His counsel of Law and Gospel from His two pierced hands douse you with the Two-Natured God/Man—Blood and Water; Body and Blood!
There is no God, no life, no anything, for you out there. Jesus comes and enters you with His Word through physical means: preaching, washing, feeding, anointing your brow with His crucifix in absolution. He places you into the boat with Him. The ship of salvation is His church and nowhere else!
Christ let Himself be caught in the devil’s snares, nets of false accusations, condemnations, beatings, and mockings. Yes, the breaking of the nets there, at the first great draught of fishes bespeaks the cross ahead for The Lord, and points to struggles and hardships for His little flock. But the real breakage was His own innocent Body punctured, torn, and spiked so that His merciful Blood of expiation could flow out not over the cover of the Ark containing the Torah, but onto the broken law contained in your defiant and decaying bodies. His Blood washes you clean and makes you the New Testament Israel, the tabernacle of the Holy Ghost, and His very virginal Body—the Church! You follow Him because He forsook all to search out and rescue you.
You will only appear to sink in your stormy lives of tribulations and sinning against others. The ship itself will only appear to be going under the waves and swells as she is beset and attacked by shrinking numbers, false sons, schisms, heresies, and bloody persecutions. No…She ever shall prevail and you are The Lambs who will see the morn of song. The song of Easter Triumph is yours because Jesus went under the waves. He suffered and was buried. He rose again. And after His rising He once more met the Apostles at the same Lake of Galilee as John tells us in his Evangel. That second time, after another great catch of fish, the nets did not break. That time, and THIS time, Jesus already has a fire with frying fish awaiting His pastors and parishioners as they come ashore. More teaching more forgiving. More eating and drinking more joyous life and peace. And the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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