The Gospel passage contains the key that the other two readings depend on for their meaning. For here Jesus straddles two worlds, the earthly and the heavenly, as only God-made-man could do. The risen Christ calls the disciples to be fishers of people, to bring into community the great catch of believers. Seated by the fire on the beach, Christ wipes clean Peter’s shameful thrice-denying episode, which had recently taken place beside another fire, in the courtyard outside the place of Jesus’ trial.
Sometimes we are also so concerned to read this Gospel passage as a mandate for the leading role of Peter and his successors in the Church that we lose sight of the message it also has for each of us. We who recognize the Lord are either like Peter – leaping into the water, full of enthusiasm – or, like the other disciples, being carried in the boat of the Church, doing our bit to haul in the net, to evangelize and make new disciples.
We hope we will not be asked to suffer, as Peter did, but we cannot expect the way to be easy – self-sacrificial love never is. All we know is that we, like Peter, are called by Jesus: “Follow Me.â€