Network of Grace

Dear Friend,

When skeptical Peter threw his net over the side of the boat as suggested by a stranger, one hundred fifty-three large fish came rushing to fill it – as the writer Paula Huston phrases it. She helps me picture those lively fish, a sign of the “much fruit” and complete joy which Jesus promised the disciples at the last supper. Rush on in. “Go for it!” my brother and his friends used to say, when the phrase was coming into vogue in the 1970’s…

I can imagine, too, a net stretched to the breaking point. The stress on the rope threads, their strength and durability are, like the number of fish, something mighty to behold. In the phrase given to me by a beloved teacher, here is the “network of grace” which Jesus invites us to enter - which he is. Death cannot break that net - even the most horrendous and publicly shameful death. Three times Jesus asks Peter “Do you love me?” He answers yes. Was Peter awed that his betrayal did not break that net? That he had entered it through the voice of the master in the voice of a stranger?  

Jesus, risen from the dead, has given the disciples breakfast, as though to say: my life – life and death - are frighteningly tangible. In your face, as the saying goes. But mysterious. So as Catholics we say, “We have the Eucharist!” when it’s truer to say the Eucharist has us (Michael Sanem, “Becoming the Good News”, p. 37). The Eucharist is not so much to possess, but to be learned and celebrated, and shared, as Pope Francis reminded us. It is to shape us for Eucharistic lives – together, as church - to be an ever more tangible network of grace in the “swirling tides of history.”

Gratefully,

Father Dan, Pastor