The disciples are trying to make sense of what happened. In John’s Gospel, after Jesus appears to Mary Magdala at the empty tomb, after he appears to the disciples in the locked room, we come to today’s Gospel reading at the Sea of Tiberias. Even though Jesus had appeared to the disciples already, today’s Gospel implies that they had left Jerusalem and gone all the way back to their native Galilee to resume their former way of life as fishermen. They still couldn’t make sense of the resurrection. They fled in fear.
One thing that strikes me in today’s reading is the elements of the Eucharist that are present. This stranger, whom they do not yet realize is the Lord, prepares them a meal of bread and roasted fish, fish they would have never had caught if it had not been for the presence of Jesus and this miracle. As Jesus invites all of us in the Eucharist to “Take this, all of you, and eat of it,” he tells the disciples to come and eat breakfast with him in a meal he has especially prepared. He and the disciples share what they have, eating in unity and community. This is such a simple scene, a beautiful picture of the Church.
Another thing that strikes me in the Gospel is the interaction between Jesus and Peter. We see them reconciling in their dialogue. Despite Peter proclaiming that he was more faithful than the other disciples at the Last Supper, saying that he is ready to go to prison with Jesus, even to death, Peter alone denied three times that he never had anything to do with Jesus. Now, in the gentlest and kindest of ways, the risen Lord asks him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Just as Peter had earlier denied Jesus three times, in answer to Jesus’ three questions, Peter asserts three times that he loves him. The risen Lord makes Peter and the other disciples realize that they are the ones to continue with Jesus’ mission of feeding the sheep. That is a mission we the Church continue to this day. In the days before the Second Vatican Council, many members of the Church thought that this was a mission reserved for the bishops, priests and consecrated members of religious communities. But parents, catechists, and all members of the Church, even our youth and our children, share in this mission today. Our Church proclaims today that all of us are to evangelize the world with the Gospel message.
As we hear this wonderful Gospel today, we had a Mass this Saturday afternoon for the children receiving their first communion. It is always an absolute honor and joy for me to celebrate first communion with our children; they are always so excited to receive Christ in the Eucharist for the very first time. I can look at the joy in their eyes and in their faces, assured that they know in the enthusiasm and knowledge of a child what they are receiving. For these children, the risen Christ is a true reality in their lives. In our religious education program of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd that our children go through here at St Jude, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who tends his flock and who finds the lost sheep.
Here is the lost sheep. He even has a name - Uno! He is the mascot of our email service, Flocknote. We human beings are like the sheep who gets lost or hurt or lonely. That can include some of us sitting here in the pews of our church right now. Just as Jesus called Peter and the disciples to continue his mission to feed his lambs and tend his sheep, we are on this mission to connect to those who are lost or hurt or lonely, to reach out to them and to lead them closer to Christ. Uno represents that lost sheep.
The disciples now had to go back to Jerusalem where they began to proclaim what Jesus’ life, words, ministry, suffering, death and rising to life meant for them and for all of us. Our first reading from Acts shows Peter and the other apostles doing exactly this. They want to share the joy and new meaning that they had come into because of their encounter with the risen Lord. As we see in Acts, it was a message that not everyone wanted to hear, with many of the key civil and religious leaders trying to stop this message from being heard. Yet, with their mission mandate and God’s truth and love leading and guiding them, they would not stop, even when they were arrested, punished, or imprisoned. They united their sufferings and tribulations with the passion and sufferings of our risen Lord.
If we are to truly to follow in the footsteps of these first disciples, proclaiming our faith in its fullness, it is not always going to be an easy journey. We follow in the footsteps of all the disciples of Christ who came before us. Because of them, the message of Christ, the message of truth and love, lives on. In that missionary spirit, I would like all of us to pray together in a prayer inspired by the words of 19th century English Cardinal St John Henry Newman:
Dear Jesus, Help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may be only a radiance of yours.
Shine through me and be in me so that every person I come in contact with will feel your presence. Let them look up and see, not only me, but also Jesus.
Stay with me so I can begin to shine as you shine, to shine as a light to others. This light, O Jesus will be from you; none of it will be mine; It will be you, shining on others through me. Let me praise you the way you love best, by shining on those around me.
Let me preach you without preaching, not by words, but by example. By the force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, O Lord, show the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you. AMEN.
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