Trinity V 2025

 
 …The people pressed upon him to hear the Word of God…
(St. Luke v. 1)
 
Trinity Tide, as we have said, is all about growing in the knowledge and love of God the Holy Trinity. We wear green vestments during this season to symbolize harvest and fertility. What should most concern us in this season is the harvest and fertility of goodness or virtue in our souls. The virtue we must grow and perfect in our hearts is essential to our hoped-for salvation. But we cannot find this virtue or goodness in ourselves. Human goodness doesn’t save. Divine goodness does. The latter is found in Jesus Christ. Jesus brings God’s goodness down from heaven to save us from ourselvses. To encounter this goodness, we must press upon Jesus to hear the Word of God. To grow and harvest its goodness in our lives, we pray for God’s Grace. Jesus gives it and we must use it.  St. James tells us today to be…doers of the Word, and not hearers only. (St. James i. 22)

Of course, God’s goodness in Jesus Christ can come to us only once we’ve realized our own limitations and utter need for it. In today’s Gospel, we see a picture of how men come to experience both. Jesus uses nature and man’s life in it to generate both knowledge and desire. Jesus never destroys nature but perfects it. Today, he uses the natural world and men’s occupation in it to lead His Apostles from nature to Grace, from the earthly to the heavenly, and from pursuing a limited good to finding the means to an eternal one.

So we read that Jesus comes into the fishing village of Gennesaret. Next, He entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. (Ibid, 3) If men would press upon [Jesus] to hear God’s Word, they must allow Peter, Christ’s minister, to thrust out a little from the land (Ibid, 3) away from the hustle and bustle, confusion, and noise of human life, to be freed from those earthly preoccupations that would distract us from Christ’s work. God’s Word must stand alone with men of prayer to address them from a place of concentration, that they might learn the truth and experience its power.

Notice that in today’s Gospel, some are on shore and some are in the boats with Jesus. Some can only hear the Word. Others, who have been with Him and studied His Word, can now benefit from its power. Peter, James, and John are with Jesus in the ships.  And while the faith of both groups is intended to be harvested by Christ, or to be caught up in the net of Christ as his spiritual fish, as Archbishop Trench reminds us, the Apostles must be converted first so that they may then become Christ’s doers of the Word and, thus, fishers of men. Saints Peter, James, and John represent the Church’s ministers. The people on the shore represent the fish that will be caught up on land once the Apostles have been caught up in Christ’s Net from the deeper spiritual waters of the sea. There are different levels and stages of faith, trust, and obedience that pass first from Christ to His Apostles, and then from His Apostles to all others who would be saved. Some men are ready to hear but not yet digest. Others will hear the Word and then experience the Power of its Love.

First, the faith of the Apostles, who have thrust out from land and onto the sea with Jesus, must be tested. We read: Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.  (Ibid, 4) Simon, like his fellow fishermen and unlike the crowd on the shore, has had a long and unsuccessful night of fishing. Most of the other fishermen are on the shore, exhausted, cleaning their nets, licking their wounds, and perhaps downcast at another night of failing to catch any fish. Matthew Henry tells us that One would have thought this should have excused [the Apostles also] from Christ’s sermon; but it was more refreshing and reviving to them than the softest slumbers. (Comm. Luke V) The fishermen on shore did not see much sense in thrusting off onto the waters again with Jesus. But the Apostles did. While others slept, Christ would use the Apostles’ powerlessness, failure, and fatigue as a tool for growing and harvesting their faith. The Apostles worked their bodies hard to catch fish, but when they failed, fully spent, they turned to Christ for the reviving of their souls. Christ knows our weakness, but will use our weakness to exhibit the strength of His Grace. His Grace will conquer our weakness and grow our faith.

Simon Peter responds to Jesus: Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net. (Ibid 5,6) Peter is weak but Christ is strong. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. (Ibid, 6,7) Peter, James, and John are overwhelmed by the catch. They called on their partners to bear the weight of the treasure trove of fish that was sinking their boats. Where the Apostles’s human ingenuity and reason had failed, God’s Grace in Jesus Christ would triumph. 

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: and so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. (Ibid, 8-10) 
 
St. Peter is overwhelmed by the Power and Love of God in Christ and nature’s response to it. Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. i. 24) is the Lord of nature and the meaning He will cull from it. Human ingenuity is one thing, but to be caught up in the provision that God’s Word yields is quite another. Peter feels his own deep sense of unworthiness as radically other than the Power and Love of God in Jesus. He falls down as one undeserving of such a gift. Archbishop Trench tells us that the deepest thing in a man’s heart…is a sense of God’s holiness as something bringing death and destruction to the unholy creature. (Miracles, 102) The faith in Peter that Christ grows and will harvest is a miracle far greater than the draught of the fishes. Peter knows himself as an unholy creature in the presence of an all-holy God. God’s Word in Jesus Christ is heard, and its power felt.

The fish that Peter, James, and John have caught are still alive, flailing, thrashing, and thwacking with all their might to return to life in the sea. Peter and his friends begin to realize that they symbolize fallen men to whom they will minister, but whose resistance, obstinacy, and determination to return to their earthly gods will be difficult to overcome. God’s Grace alone can accomplish it.

Christ catches Peter, James, and John in His Net. They find themselves 
 
in a state of Grace, in which all the contradiction is felt, God is still a consuming fire, yet not anymore for the sinner, but for the sin…[for they are in] the presence of God…[whose] glory is veiled, whose nearness…every sinful man may endure, and in that nearness may little by little be prepared for the…open vision of the face of God. (Trench, Idem) 
 
Jesus says, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. (Ibid, 10) Jesus intends that Peter, James, John, and the other Apostles should come alive as fishers of men.
Peter had begged Christ to depart from him, because he was a sinful man. (idem) Christ and His Grace have a greater work for Peter and his friends to do. So, we read that when the [Apostles] had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him. (Ibid, 11) The Apostles were called to be fish out of water  –to leave behind their earthly work for a heavenly catch of men. They were called to be all of one mind, having compassion one of another, loving as brethren…pitiful…courteous; not rendering evil for evil…but contrariwise blessing…eschewing evil, ensuing good, seeking peace and ensuing it. (1 Peter iii. 8,9) Forsaking all means leaving behind fishing for fish, to fish for men. Forsaking all will mean coming to know God’s goodness in Jesus and embracing the virtue in their hearts for the salvation of the world. We press upon Jesus to hear the Word of God (Idem), leave our earthly occupations, and thrust out a little from the land. (Idem) We launch into the deep with Jesus and cast our nets out for a draught. Trusting with faith in the Word of the Lord alone can sink the ship of our sinfulness so that we might be caught up in Christ’s Net. Faith in God’s Grace can flourish and bloom [only if] it is welcomed; it can act [only if] it is activated, [for] all the infinitude of its power comes from the adoring passivity in which it lies open to God. (Mouroux, p. 217) The Apostles could have returned to fishing for fish. But another miracle is at work here. God’s Power in Jesus Christ will grow and harvest their faith.

Fear Not. The Son of God alone, wholly removed from His natural glory and bliss in Heaven, is the real fish out of water. We can become fish out of water also as Christ catches us up in the Net of His death for our future life in Heaven. Being caught up into Christ’s Net, His power will enable us to be followers of that which is good…suffering for righteousness’ sake…so that happy we may be (Idem), serving Him in all godly quietness (Collect) and fishing for men.

Amen.
©wjsmartin

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