5TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (C)

“Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,

but at your command I will lower the nets.”

Lk 5:1-11

FROM G. B. CAIRD

The crowds pressed upon Jesus because of his words of authority and his deeds of power. But there were some upon whom he made a deeper and more permanent impression, who found in him something transcendent, numinous, utterly compelling.

The first to experience this humbling and exhilarating awe was Simon. Sitting in his boat on the Lake of Gennesaret (elsewhere called the Sea of Galilee or the Sea of Tiberias), he listened to the teaching of Jesus and it won him heart and soul. Common sense, reason, and fisherman's lore bade him go home to bed; but Jesus said, 'Let down your nets', and he obeyed.

Whether Luke supposed the amazing catch of fish to involve control over nature or supernatural insight, who can say? The point of his story is Jesus' miraculous influence with dispirited men, wearied by a night of profitless toil. These were the men he needed as his disciples, men disciplined by labor and hardship, but with the impetuous loyalty to say, 'If you give the order, I will do it.'

On Simon at least the impact he made was a profoundly moral one, resulting in a sense of sin. It was not the miracle that brought him to his knees but the grandeur of sheer goodness.

Miraculous catch of fish in Luke and in John

This incident is in some respects similar to the one recorded in John 21, and it has been conjectured that the two accounts are variants of a single story, which came to Luke without any indication of its original setting.

The differences, however, are far more striking than the similarities. This is part of the very complex problem of the relation between the third and fourth Gospels. One possibility is that two independent stories have in the course of oral transmission interacted on one another, as in the case of the two stories of the anointing of Jesus (Luke 7:36-38; Mark 14:3-9; John 12:1-8).

SEE ALSO >> 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time (2010)