In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
May the Lord Jesus give you his peace.
We hear today from the reading of the fourth Sunday after Pentecost of the catch of great fish,
in which Jesus exhorts or tells Simon Peter to go out and put out into the deep.
There's a couple of putting outs, and one of them is putting out just a little bit from which he teaches.
And the second putting out is this catching of fish.
And it's a figure of the teaching of the church Jesus teaches.
From his church.
And the catching of fish is an apt symbol of catching us faithful in the net of the church of the Holy Spirit,
and bringing us out of the waters of baptism into a new life of grace.
The fish are fitting symbols of the faithful because of the fact that, well, when you catch fish,
you basically catch them up out of the water, and you catch them, and you clean them, and you gut them, and you eat them.
And in a similar way, the faithful, and this is why Jesus, it seems, would be, you know,
after his resurrection from the dead, you know, do you have anything here to eat?
We got just a couple of fish, and he ate them.
Because in coming up out of the waters, we die.
As fish die out of the water, we die to our old selves, and that old selves is the old human nature,
which we must die to.
And being up out of the waters of baptism, we're taken up into a new life,
which basically means that we become.
We become assimilated into the Christ, who, so to speak, we don't think of it often,
but in the Holy Communion, as we communicate with Jesus, he enters into us.
We, again, get taken up into the bigger reality.
We enter more fully or are consummated in him.
He eats us, and so to speak, that we become in a definitive way,
not only by soul, by faith, but also by body,
in which case we also are participating in his resurrection.
If we have died with Christ, we shall also rise with him.
And so the fish get at that mystery of being submerged into the world of sin,
taken out of the waters of baptism, henceforth dying to our old selves.
There's nothing else to do after that, and then being assimilated into the Christ.
Through Holy Communion, we have a great draft of fishes,
and the disciples, it seems like they can't even speak.
They beckon to their partners, all the fish coming up here,
at the word of the Christ, and they're obedient to that word.
We also can meditate on the Father Lapidae
and his commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke.
We'll look at this, verse 10 here.
This is Luke chapter 5, verse 10.
From henceforth you shall catch men.
And he says, well, that catching can be derived in a couple different ways.
One is almost like hunting and catching something alive.
And the other way that it can be derived from is from a couple of roots.
It's of living and kind of quickening.
And so St. Ambrose, for example, translated it in that second way
where Peter, from now on, you will be basically giving life to men by catching them.
And that's truth.
It's truth because we're being given the grace of a new life in baptism.
And we can also think about how the new Eve, whose name in the Greek, Eve, Zoe, means life.
And there's a new life, and that new life is given to us through,
this new mother.
Behold your mother.
And there's a reality there.
She, Lumen Gentium, will teach us she's our mother in the order of grace.
And that this life, she also participates in the restoration of the life of grace to souls
from her faith, hope, obedience, and burning charity.
Okay, so there's also another draught of fishes in the Gospels,
which is in John 21.
And just mentioning at lunch the other day, taking a quick look at it,
it seems to be there's different, and it's, you know, a big question mark.
What's the symbolism here?
And St. Jerome noted that in his day, they were cataloged maybe through Plato,
153 fishes in the Mediterranean.
So there's 153 fishes, all of humanity encompassed there.
St. Augustine looked at it and said, well, the number 17,
if you add up all the numbers inferior to it, 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus all the way up to 16 and 17,
you get 153, and therefore it's like the fullness of the decalogue,
10 plus 7, the fullness of the sevenfold gift of the Spirit.
One thing also, take it with a grain of salt, but just to propose it might be useful
for your reading of John 19, 20, and 21, is that the 153, 153,
is representative of the Constitution of the Church.
And we take the numbers individually.
One, there's one head of the body, five, and that body has a community,
which is a three, and just kind of spell it out a little bit how we get there.
At the cross, Jesus is on the cross, and there are four women around him,
and then there are also two figures that are kind of pulled out of that.
This is John 19, 23 to 27, with Mother Mary and the beloved disciple.
What are we looking at here?
We're looking at the Church in its origins.
The Church is born from the side of Christ,
and there's one head of that body of the Church, and it's the Christ.
That's the one.
And the four women who are gathered, when I am lifted up, I will draw all things to myself,
are representative of Christ's Church throughout the world as the mystical body of Christ.
Well, that's four.
Yeah, but in union with the one, it's a five.
Again, Church is in communion with the Christ, the head.
And also this communion,
the figures of Mother Mary and the beloved disciple John,
behold your son, behold your mother, is a communion.
And this is one way, I mean, this is certainly Church teaching.
What I'm giving you is speculation, but Church teaching is that the Church is,
well, it's St. Paul, right?
The mystical body of Christ, and it was also a communion.
And this latter part of being communion is we see certainly Mother Mary involved in both.
There's aspects of this.
But just to kind of spell it out a bit more,
in reading John 19, this is where I found it a bit helpful, through 21,
in seeing that with the figures of St. Mary Magdalene, especially,
and then St. Peter in John 21,
the constitution of the Church as body and as head.
And if you take a look at that, and even the, I guess,
if you add up the two, the two figures, the two figures, the two figures, the two figures,
you add the gematria, I guess if I'm saying that word right,
that each of the Hebrew letters and words have a numerical value.
You know, I don't know, it's like A is one, B is two, and so forth,
but whatever it is in Hebrew has a numerical value.
And the Hebrew root for Magdalene is Migdal, which just means tower,
and it has a value of 77.
And the Hebrew root of Jonah, which is what Jesus calls Simon, son of Jonah,
has a...
a value of 76.
And the constitution of those body,
St. Mary Magdalene representing the body,
St. Peter representing the head,
is this 153.
Different kind of ways we're getting at the same mystery.
But nevertheless, even in John 21,
we have the same kind of format of this 153 with the head.
Jesus transferring, right?
Jesus establishing the body in John 21,
Jesus establishing the headship with St. Peter.
Who's that?
That's the Lord.
Into the water, swimming, swimming, swimming,
singling out Simon Peter, Simon bar Jonah.
Do you love me?
Three times.
You know that I love you.
Establishing, reestablishing the headship,
establishing the headship of Peter,
the promise of Peter amongst the apostles.
But the beginning of John 21, we have that 153.
We've got Peter.
We've got four of the disciples who are named.
We've got Nathaniel.
We've got Daniel, Thomas, the sons of Zebedee,
and two unnamed.
And we have that same kind of 153.
The four disciples named in union with Peter.
The two unnamed in union with Peter is 153.
And so it seems to be a useful way to read.
Take it with a grain of salt.
If it's useful for you, great.
If not, forget about it.
But in constitution of the church as the mystical body of Christ
and as communion,
okay, great.
That's like cotton candy.
In other words, sometimes scripture,
looking at scripture can be kind of like,
you know, and I'm still hungry.
Well, what we get from it is this,
is that as men consecrated to our lady
and living out the Marian vow,
what's at stake is with that 153,
is that more and more as we become like Jesus crucified,
what we expect to happen,
in our lives is the issuing forth of the immaculate one.
This is transubstantiation into the immaculate.
That the immaculate, no,
St. Paul will talk about this as woman being the glory of man.
And then he goes on with a couple of verses what that means.
It means basically being completely from and for,
which means in pure relation to woman was created from man,
woman was created for man.
Woman is the glory of man.
Cut to the new eve.
Mother Mary completely coming from the Christ
and is completely for the Christ.
This is the immaculate personhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The pure relation, the complement of the,
extra complement of the Holy Trinity.
So when we unite ourselves more and more to Christ crucified,
which is the logic of consecrated life,
we expect that issuing forth from our lives
is this immaculate one who is,
who we're supposed to be as saints,
so that there can be a spiritual,
not just maternity, generation, right?
Jesus is the father of world to come.
And what's issuing forth is this,
this mystery of grace for souls.
Behold your son.
Okay.
So we rely on certainly the intercession of St.
Sylvarius today who was Pope like St.
Peter and martyr like St.
Peter for this grace in the name of the father and of the son of the Holy.
Spirit.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.