Are You Casting Your Net?

One of the resurrection appearances of Jesus (Gospel of John, Chapter 21) places him at the Sea of Tiberias where his disciples, including Simon Peter are gathered.  Scripture has Peter making the statement, “I am going fishing,” and the others saying they are going to go with him.

In the dark of night, they catch nothing.

As morning dawns they encounter Jesus (but do not recognize him at first.)  He casually asks them if they caught anything (which they didn’t.)  He tells them to cast their net over the right side of the boat, telling them they will find something.

Indeed, there were so many fish they couldn’t even pull in their net!  When they disembarked from their boat, Jesus was sitting on the shore with a charcoal fire on which he had fish and bread.  He told them to bring over some of the fish they had just caught and invited them to breakfast!

Interestingly, the resurrected Jesus had the ability to eat food in his resurrected body and he was visible to the human eye.  

And isn’t it also interesting that in the dark of the night, nothing happened, but with the dawning of light and their encounter with Jesus, they had all they needed?

You see, Jesus is the one who multiplies our efforts.  If we consider the fish as a metaphor for men, the story opens up to the work of evangelization.  And to put a finer point on it, in the Eucharistic offering of Jesus and the very real encounter with him in the breaking of the bread, he is revealed to us after his rising.

For anyone in ministry who needs affirmation that their work is effective, this is a good passage to reflect on, because if we are truly doing the work God has called us to do, we really do not need to worry about the number of people being saved or even the power of our words.

 

Jesus takes care of that.

All we really need to do is, as Mary says in the Gospel of John (Chapter 2) at the Wedding at Cana, “Do whatever he tells you.”

All we really need to do is cast our net where he tells us to.  If our words are going to be meaningful or if our work is going to be productive, that is up to him to work through them.  We really just need to show up and not worry about the rest.

Too often we look to statistics for some indication that our work is worth the effort we put into it, but honestly, it is worth our effort if it is what God has asked us to do.

A church guided by the Holy Spirit, with men and women who are holy leaders, together with genuinely faith-filled laypeople who are seeking God’s will, is a church God can work with. 

If you are part of a struggling church, just remember there is always hope in God.  Do not base your success on the number of parishioners you have, but on the disciples you are forming.  

Sometimes risks must be taken so that we do not find ourselves standing still, just because it seems safer.  If Simon Peter, exhausted and disappointed from his fruitless night of fishing hadn’t been willing to get back in that boat and do what Jesus asked him to do, he might never have known what was possible. 

It couldn’t possibly have seemed reasonable to Peter to do what Jesus asked him to do, but he did it anyway.

Sometimes, to determine if you are a true leader, people in business will ask, “Who are you mentoring?”

This is a question every, single Christian should ask themselves because it is a modern day way of asking, “Are you casting your net?”

Janet Cassidy

Janetcassidy.com

Janetcassidy.blubrry.net