5 April 2024 - Only By Grace Reflections
#OnlyByGraceReflections #CFC #CouplesforChrist
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TOPIC: HAVE YOU ‘GONE FISHING’?
First Reading: Acts 4: 1-12
Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 118: 1-2 and 4, 22-24, 25-27a
Alleluia: Psalms 118: 24
Gospel: John 21: 1-14
In today’s Gospel reading, we find the disciples returning to their occupation as fishermen. Jesus had called them away from their profession some years earlier. He had called them to follow Him and to share in His work of drawing people into God’s kingdom. However, now that Jesus had been crucified, there was nothing to do but go back to what they knew best. They have ‘gone fishing’, so to speak. The disciples felt dejected, lost and with a tinge of guilt hanging in their conscience, after leaving and even denying Jesus when He was suffering. The disciples who had ‘gone fishing’ were heading back to where they had been, perhaps in retrospection.
They see the risen Lord now standing on the shore to redirect them, to renew the call He had made to them some years back. He first established communion with them, which they had broken by abandoning Him in the hour of His passion and death. He did so by the invitation, “Come and have breakfast”.
We are often tempted to go back to where we have been. Yet, the Lord is always calling us forward. Even when we have failed Him in various ways, He continues to call us to begin anew, and to cast our net in a different direction. Much like the teams and players in our opening story who have ‘gone fishing’ and need redirection, so they can come back the next season more prepared and more competitive, we too need a time of reflection to review where we have been and, invigorated and renewed, to move forward with greater zeal and commitment.
This is the 1439th installment of our CFC contemplation series focusing on the daily liturgical
