One eighty
- Gary Fritsch
- Apr 24
- 2 min read
This time of the liturgical year, we examine the Acts of the Apostles along with the scriptures and we get a very interesting before and after picture of the Apostles. The intervening moment for this comparison is the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
In today's instance we see two 180's happening. As the Apostles try to make some sense of the Resurrection appearance of Jesus and fill the time between Jesus' visits with them, not really knowing when He would appear next. Peter does what many of us do in the face of challenging circumstances, we resort to what we know. This is maybe more critical for Peter, because to revert to being a fisherman was to return to what He was doing before he met Jesus. When he met Jesus, Our Lord changed his life, and changed his occupation. He appears to be turning his back on his newfound role of fisher of men. We can do this as we wait for the Lord to answer prayer, to show up in our lives in a big way. We can fade back to what we did before, sometimes even for a little comfort.
Jesus doesn't chide or reprimand Peter for this, but appears to him and the others, and kindly makes them breakfast - in the place that they are. He does this for us as well. He comes to meet us where we are, but He is not so unkind as to allow us to stay there. He calls us forward to something more. Sometimes He can point out the lack of satisfaction in our efforts "Children, have you caught anything?"
Then, when we fully realize His saving power, His forgiving power, the power of His Holy Spirit, we are fundamentally changed and do a complete 180 from where we were before. If we look at Peter in the reading from Acts, we hear his response to challenges about Jesus as complete an unadulterated witness to who Jesus is. It is this boldness that testifies most powerfully not only to the Resurrection, but to the Power of the Holy Spirit. We are called to be Resurrection people AND people of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is in all of us by virtue of the Sacraments that we have received, so pray for it to be stirred up - in every conversation, in every interaction, in every act of service.
Where are we today - are we clinging to elements of an old life (our version of fishing), or are we boldly proclaiming the Lord and moving forward in this with confidence. Pope Francis, who passed away this past Monday tells us this in Evangeli Gaudium: "All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envision a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients."
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