Please read the passage before the commentary.
Peter was going fishing. The other disciples agree to go with him. The author introduces the other disciples to us as if we had not met them earlier in the Gospel. Perhaps Peter was going fishing the way Jonah was going to Tarshish, to resign his position with the Lord.
Perhaps we are introduced to the disciples a second time because they are a new generation of disciples and each generation has its own Peter and its own disciples. Perhaps the new Peter is called Leo XIV. Perhaps we are those going fishing in today’s Sea of Tiberias.
Whether the Lord Jesus was refusing to accept Peter’s resignation and was calling Peter back to himself or not, Jesus invited Peter and his companions to breakfast. He fed them with the fish he had brought and increased that with the fish they had caught (God always does that, minging himself with ourselves).
The fish has long been associated with Jesus. In Greek, the initials of “Jesus Christ, Son of God Savior” spells the Greek word for fish. We should probably be thinking in terms of Eucharist: Christ is present to us under the form of food.
We, the new generation of believers, encounter the Lord in the sacred meal. We eat it and recognize the Jesus as Lord, then we go out fishing in the name of the Lord. “This is another third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.”
Leave a Reply