Fishing Tips from Today’s Gospel

(Fr. Andrew’s homily for Sunday January 21^st, 2024)

The apostles are called to be fishers of people... Peter was casting the net with his brother Andrew. John was mending the nets with his brother James. They were doing two different things. Jesus makes two calls. Always to two brothers. There is a great deal of meaning here.

1.  Fishers take away fish from their comfort zone to a completely new world, where fish necessarily die. A fish ends on the plate of a fortunate man who enjoys it and, in this way, the fish becomes part of that man’s body. In a similar way, Jesus did not come to earth to leave us in our comfort zone, swimming in our sins, but to take us away from iniquity into God’s light of justice. When we are caught by the net of God’s word we die to our sins but, unlike the fish, we are reborn to a new life. Unlike the fish, we eat in Holy Communion the one who has caught us in the nets of His love but, like the fish, we are the ones who become part of His Body, the Church.

Now, becoming part of His Body implies necessarily to be dead, that is, to have died to sin. Jesus calls only some to be fishers of people, but He calls all people to repentance. Jesus’ message is “Repent, and believe in the good news.” There is no peace, no good news without repentance, there is no true love without conversion from our sins, from our concrete and personal sins.

2.  Casting the net, mending the nets... The preaching of the Gospel is the net catching people. All fishers cast the net and all of them must repair and take care of the nets. Are we not all prophets? Are we not all fishers of people, in a way? Casting the net is preaching, is action. Mending the nets is learning, is correcting our misunderstandings, is contemplation. Peter is the symbol of action, John is the symbol of contemplation. Peter does not work alone, he works with his brother Andrew: this means that we must not preach alone. Jesus does not like the “lone wolf” type, the one-man-show. We help each other in preaching and, most importantly, we preach, not our own ideas, but the message of the Church: we preach the Gospel as interpreted by the official magisterium of the Church. This is why also John, who is the symbol of contemplation, is not alone mending the nets but with his brother James. We learn the message from the Church and we correct it by the official and traditional teaching of the Church.

If the net of our preaching is not good, we are not going to take away people from sin. We have to mend the nets, make sure that our preaching is such that we help people to stop sinning. Wrong, bad teaching is like a broken net, which is good for nothing, which leaves people in their sins either by not speaking against sin or even by approving sinful conducts.

A fisher’s job is fishing. A fisher casting a broken net may seem very humane to the fish but he is an idiot: his job is not to leave the fish in the water by to take them out. The king wants fish on his plate and the fisher’s job is to serve the king. In a similar way, a bad preacher, who tells people that there is no sin and that anything they want to do is good, this bad preacher may seem very humane but he is not serving the King. The only way for people to have new life is to follow Jesus’ message: “Repent, get out of the water, and believe the Gospel.”

3.  There is another meaning in the fact that they are always two, working and contemplating, and it has to do with charity, with love. Two brothers must love each other. The commandments of charity are two: love God and love your neighbour as yourself. This means three things, which I will refer briefly. 1) Love must be the reason we work and the reason we mind our teaching: we are prophets because we love God first and because we love people and want to save them. 2) Love must accompany our work and our contemplation: our action must transpire love, not anger. 3) Love must be a witness to our work and to our study: if we say but we do not do, very little we can expect from our efforts.

Let us be good, tasty fish: unlike the fish, we decide whether we get caught or not. Let us repent and die to our sins, to our concrete, personal sins. What are they...? Let us be good fishers. Let us repair our nets, let us recover the right teaching so that we and the people we love may benefit from it.

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(Other ideas to reflect upon)

Fish seem to be fine in the water, but all fish eventually die, sometimes eaten by a bigger fish. Let us fish and serve the King.

The fish we catch not only will have new life but they are the ones who will have supper with the King. The first Christians used to refer to Jesus by drafting a fish, because the word “fish” in Greek (ICHTHÝS) was an acronym for “Iesus (Jesus) Christós (Christ) Theoú (of God) Yiós (Son) Sotér (Savior)” that is, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Savior.”