The Miraculous Haul

To me this addresses so perfectly that feeling of astonishment and directness we feel when God suddenly addresses us ... in a way that means more to us than anyone else around, because it is a message tailored for us specifically. And, then, suddenly we can see.

He told Peter to row out into the deep and lower the nets again. And now for the first time we hear Peter speak: he must have said a good deal before this, for he was almost too ready a talker; but this is the first utterance of his that the Holy Spirit thought worth recording. "Master," he said, "we have labored all the night, and have taken nothing; but at thy word I will let down the net." All Peter's discipleship was in that answer — "It seems impossible, but if you say so —!"

We know what followed — a haul of fish that burst the net. Peter and Andrew called to James and John, their partners, who were in another boat near by, and both boats were loaded with fish to the gunwales, nearly sinking under the weight. What was the exact nature of the miracle? Either Jesus knew that the fish would be there — if so, it was by no natural knowledge that a carpenter would read signs that the fishermen missed; or he willed them to be there.

Peter's reaction is fascinating: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." After all, this was not the first miracle Peter has seen Jesus work. He had been there when his new Master spoke to Nathanael of an incident that his bodily eyes had not seen — Peter may well have thought that he was reading the other's mind. He had been at the wedding feast in Cana when the water was changed into wine, he had been there all through the week of miracles following Passover in Jerusalem. Only recently his mother-in-law had been cured of fever at a touch of Christ's hand and a word from his lips. But reading minds and healing bodies, even making wine — such things lay outside his experience: even without miracle, these were mysteries to Peter. But fish were different: he knew all about fish. This miracle hit home to him as the others had not.

So we understand the special intensity of his astonishment. But why the fear? Why was his first reaction to a vast haul of fish an overpowering sense of his own sinfulness?He had see the money-changers scourged from the Temple — and probably was delighted to see it, feeling that they were getting what they deserved. Evidently it had not occurred to him that he was a sinner himself. This time, precisely because the miracle hit home to him in all the reality of its miraculousness, he suddenly saw Christ for the first time. Seeing Christ, he at last saw himself.

To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed