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fishermen

3rd Sunday of Year B – 2021

22 janvier 2021
Nicole Gregoire
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Catégories: Anglophones et anglophiles
Mots-clés: fishermen, inspiration, Man of Nazareth, meaning, message, Mk.1:14-20, ordinary, routine, tasks

The usual tasks, the ordinary occupations, the habitual duties – yes, the everyday routine.
Not very attractive, not especially inviting, and… not really inspiring…

Yet, inspiration can be found there – this is the message I discover in today’s gospel text (Mk.1:14-20).

The four fishermen who were to become the first apostles were not in the Temple.
They were not joining in a ritual celebration, or even offering alms for the priests.
They were simply busy with the daily chore of mending their nets and getting food for their family by fishing, as they were used to.

The inspiration comes precisely in the fact that it is there, in the usual and the ordinary, that Jesus meets us.
It is in these day-to-day tasks that he calls us to share in ‘his task’, that of doing the will of the Father.

We sometimes think of the special occasions and the unusual situations as meeting-places with God.
We may see our daily work as just too ordinary for God.

What about 30 years spent as a carpenter by the Man of Nazareth?
Was that not very ordinary and commonplace?

But, I am personally convinced that, to God nothing is too common.
Nothing is too low for him to join us where we are, precisely at what we are doing.

And then… things can take on such a different meaning.
 

Note: Another reflection on a different theme is available in French at: https://image-i-nations.com/3e-dimanche-de-lannee-b-2021/

  

Source: Image: Free Bible Images

3rd Sunday of Easter, C

7 avril 2016
Nicole Gregoire
Aucun commentaire
Catégories: Anglophones et anglophiles
Mots-clés: 153 fish catch, Adam, fishermen, Gn.2:19, God's concern, Jesus, Jn.21:3, Jn.21:9-10, Lc.1:32, Mary Mother of God, Risen Lord

How are you doing?
How are things with you?
Are you managing all right?
How are you faring?

So many expressions that we hear repeatedly – expressions of interest in another person, expressions of concern about what is happening to him or her.
They manifest to others that we care for their well-being, we may even worry somehow about their welfare.

stchrysostoms.wordress.com

This is the language that the ‘man-on-the-shore’ uses to greet the group of fishermen getting closer to the lakeshore. “Friends, have you caught anything?” The faces surely give the answer as well as the lips: “No.” So the stranger – so he appears – adds: “Throw the net out to starboard and you’ll find something” (Jn.21:3).

The story is well-known to us including the catch of 153 fish. Human concern, so it seems, has provided what every fisherman dreams of! More still, God’s concern expressed in the of the Risen Lord slowly recognised as the Master.

Whenever I read this gospel text, I marvel at many aspects of it but there is one that especially retains my attention: “As soon as they came ashore they saw that there was some bread there, and a charcoal fire with fish cooking on it. Jesus said, ‘Bring some of the fish you have just caught’.”(Jn.21:9-10).
Jesus had already prepared breakfast for his apostles – everything was there ready and yet… he asks them to contribute something.

This is what I call: ‘God’s method’, yes, God’s way of doing – from the first chapters of Genesis (Gn.2:19) when God tells the newly-created man to name the animals, to the moment of the Annunciation (Lc.1:32) when God asks Mary, a woman of our race, to be the mother of his Son – God wants us to collaborate with him. He wants us – poor, weak, unreliable though we may be – to take part in his plan to make the world a better place, that is to save it, literally!

And in this ‘year of grace’ 2016, I do not see God’s method having changed… only his collaborators have… looking very much like you and me!

Source: Image: stchrysostoms.wordpress.com