Golden Moments
(Acts 5.27-32,40b-41; Rev 5.11-14; Jn 21.1-19)
Nearly all of us will have experienced déjà vu moments. We meet someone or come across a new situation, yet have this weird inner conviction that we have seen this all before.
The scene of Jesus meeting the disciples on the shore of the sea of Tiberias, as recounted in today’s gospel, is like that. They had gone back to fishing, their original work; overnight they catch nothing; there is a stranger on the shore who tells them to cast their nets afresh; amazed, they haul in a vast catch.
This might seem a rerun of their first call to discipleship, but there are important differences. It is, without a doubt, Jesus, but mysteriously different. In the catch of 153 fish (one suggestion by exegetes – the number of foreign nations known to the Jewish people) there is perhaps a call to go out to all nations.
Sometimes we too come to moments of lull in our lives. Losing a job or a spouse, shifting homes or country, leaves us unsure where to go next. At such moments it is good to go back in memory to our past golden moments – not to bask in them but to regain momentum and vision for wherever God is calling us next.
Source: 3rd Sunday Easter Year C
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