Dear brothers and sisters, Fiat!
Today's Gospel speaks of the third apparition to the disciples. Jesus already appeared to His disciples twice (Jn 21:14). Thomas resisted, but in the end he fell on his knees before the Lord. Now the disciples know that their crucified master has come back to life from the world of the dead. Now they know that all He said was true. Now they know that Jesus shares the same divine nature with the Father. And yet, this story seems to suggest a faith that falls within the shadow. Seven disciples meet again near the familiar sea of Tiberias (and the other four, where are they?).
Peter decides to go fishing and the other six follow him. There is a kind of regression in those meager words. It almost seems that the disciples re-enter the previous life, without any trace of what happened.
No prayer, no request, no dialogue: the risen master is not consulted. The outcome of that fishing confirms my impression, They worked to catch nothing. The luminous experience of the risen Jesus does not deprive us of the reality of our humanity that is poor in faith, always present in chiaroscuro.
But the Lord manifests Himself right there, in our weak and uncertain steps. He goes to meet the disciples on the seashore, not to reproach them, but to help them; He does this with infinite delicacy, He only asks them for something to eat and points to a precise area for fishing. The fishermen obey, and here is the surprise sign: the net is filled with fish to the point that they cannot pull it up. Memory is activated: where did we already see this scene? always gets it before: it's Him! And this time Peter is more reactive to John’s voice. Peter throws himself into the sea to reach the shore when he hears that the Lord is there! The other disciples hasten to return with the boat and here is another surprise on the shore: there is a grilled fish that is already cooking on the fire. Jesus asked for food, but He already prepared food for them, like a mother waiting for her children to return from an activity and then calling them to the table: come and eat. Success in fishing, food ready and in abundance, joy in meeting with the Lord ... When there is Jesus, there is everything !!!
In this very simple scene, where the disciples eat together the fish prepared by the Lord and the fish they have just caught, we could make a very important Eucharistic freeze frame image: Jesus approached, He took the bread and He gave it to them, and so He did for the fish. Jesus renews His call to Peter and his companions in the place of their daily work. They will have to become, as Jesus promised, fishermen of men. But they will have to remember that without Jesus they will not be able to catch anything, they will have to remember how they themselves have been caught and fished out, that is invited to the banquet of a careful and discreet love that gratuitously give. They will have to remember that the fish found in the net are 153, the total number of species of fish existing at the time of Jesus: symbol of the human multitude of every people of the earth that the love of God wants to reach through them, poor disciples of the Church of every time, in whose hands the Lord puts everything!
The page of the Gospel invites us to contemplate the love of Jesus towards the creature who sometimes behaves in an ungrateful manner and only wants to trust in herself. At Christmas 1937, Jesus explains to Luisa that if He had taken into account the human ingratitude to His great Love, He would have taken the way to go back to Heaven; but He would have saddened and embittered
His Love, and turned the feast into mourning. When Jesus wants to accomplish His greatest works in order to make them more beautiful, He puts everything aside - human ingratitude, sins, miseries, weaknesses - and He gives course to His greatest works, as if those things did not exist. If Jesus had wanted to care about the evils of man, He couldn’t have done great works, or put all His Love on the field. He would have remain hampered - suffocated in His own Love. Instead, in order to be free in His works, and to make them as beautiful as He can, Jesus places everything aside and, if necessary, He covers everything with His Love, so that He sees nothing but His Love and His Will. He moves forward with His greatest works, and He performs them as if nobody had offended Him. For His Glory, nothing can be lacking to His decorum - to the beauty and the greatness of His works
This is why Jesus would want that we too did not occupy ourselves with our weaknesses, our evils and our troubles. In fact, the more the creature thinks about those, the weaker she feels, and the more the poor one feels drowned by evils, while her miseries press round her more strongly. By thinking about it, weakness feeds more weakness, and the poor creature falls even more; evils become stronger, miseries reduce her to starvation. But if she doesn’t think about them, they disappear by themselves.
Good is completely the opposite. One good feeds another good - one act of love calls for more love. One abandonment in the Divine Will makes her feel the new Divine Life within herself. Therefore, thinking of good, forms the food and the strength to do more good. This is why Jesus wants our thinking to be occupied by nothing other than loving Him and living in the Divine Will. God’s Love will burn all our miseries and all our evils, and the Divine Volition will become our Life, using our miseries as the base on which to raise Its Throne.