Text:
18 As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 And when he had passed on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets; and he called them. 22 And immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people.
the explanation
One of the features of the Gospel of Matthew, from which this chapter is taken, is that Jesus is not alone, like the teachers of ancient times. He is always followed by people who hear his teaching and either accept it or reject it. The Gospel writer emphasizes this aspect of Jesus’ work, giving great importance to the apostles, whom he often calls disciples, indicating that they are required to follow their teacher “wherever he goes,” hear his teaching and pass it on to others so that they, in turn, become disciples of Jesus.
This interest in the role of Jesus’ disciples appears in many places in the Gospel of Matthew, including, for example, the beginning of chapter five, where Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples (5:1), and the crowds marvel at this teaching (7:28), which means that Jesus Christ is speaking to his disciples, and the crowds receive this teaching and hear it through them. The disciples here take, so to speak, the role of Moses in the Old Testament who received the Law from God on the mountain and conveyed it to the waiting people below. At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ gives the authority given to him by God the Father to his disciples to go and convey Jesus’ teaching to the nations, baptizing them (28:18-20).
Today’s Gospel text tells us about the beginning of the Lord Jesus’ evangelistic work. The Lord Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan and then led up into the wilderness where he was tempted by the wiles of Satan. He returned from there victorious. When he heard that John had been handed over, he departed to Galilee, left Nazareth, and came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea (the Sea of Galilee). From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (see Matthew 3:13 to 4:17). In the Evangelist Luke we find a more detailed account of the calling of Simon, Andrew, James, and John. The Lord Jesus was teaching by the lake while sitting in Peter’s boat. After he finished teaching, he ordered Peter, who had not caught a fish, to cast his nets into the water. They caught a large number of fish and filled both boats. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (see Luke 5:1-11).
This event was a divine revelation to these fishermen, and the focus was not on the miracle but on the One who accomplished the miracle. It became clear that the One who gave the abundant fish now was the same One who had always given, even though He had been hidden before. This certainty that struck the fishermen prompted them to leave their nets and follow the One who filled them. They followed Him without condition or question because they knew that He had always given them what they asked for and that they would obtain what they wanted without asking. You do not make conditions on Jesus, but rather you weep in repentance for your distance from Him because you were deprived of His graces that are now poured out upon you in abundance.
“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The Lord Jesus gave the fishermen a new mission, which is to preach the gospel and lead people to the life revealed in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are all on the threshold of this life. If the Lord Jesus is revealed in the depths of our concerns, preoccupations, and needs, then our lives become catches for eternal life. If our movements and actions reflect an intimate relationship with the Lord the Redeemer, then we, like Peter and his companions, have moved from the nets of death to the nets of eternal life.
“And Jesus went about Galilee” In addition to speaking of the call of the disciples, our Gospel passage mentions twice that Jesus taught and worked in Galilee. Preaching in Galilee has great symbolic importance, since Galilee is distinguished by the fact that the Jews there lived with the Gentiles, that is, non-Jews, which means that Jesus’ preaching was directed to both Jews and Gentiles. Therefore, it is important that Jesus called his disciples to Galilee, so that he could send them to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” first (Matthew 10:6), and then to all the nations (Matthew 28:19), to convey to them one teaching, which is that the kingdom of God has drawn near through Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus did not exclude anyone from the good news of the kingdom, but rather he began to roam all of Galilee in order to attract everyone with the net of life. His teaching and his good news made the kingdom of heaven present in the life of every listener, and the tangible sign of his presence was the healing of every disease and weakness. These healings were not the kingdom, but rather a spark from it, a taste of the blessings that the kingdom contains. But these healings lose their effectiveness if we return with them to a life scattered around problems, concerns, preoccupations and passions, and we cut off the path to the kingdom by tearing the nets of life and falling once again into the nets of death.
The Call of the Apostles by Saint Ephrem the Syrian:
They came to Him as fishermen, and they became fishers of men: “At that time, as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men’ (Matthew 4:18-23). This is what the prophet Jeremiah had previously said about it: ‘Behold, I send out fishers, and they will catch them from all the mountains and high places’ (16:16)!
If he had sent wise men, they would have said that they had convinced the people and won them over, or that they had deceived them and taken control of them. If the messengers had been rich, they would have said that they had deceived the people by feeding them, or that they had bribed them and controlled them! If he had sent strong men, they would have said that they had intimidated them with force or suppressed them with violence!
But the apostles had none of this. The Lord showed it to everyone by the example of Simon; he was a coward, so he was afraid of the voice of a maid; and he was poor, so he could not pay his share of the tax, half a setter. And he said, “I have neither gold nor silver” (Acts 3:6). And he was not educated enough to know how to get rid of it by trickery when he denied the Lord.
So these fishermen went out, and overcame the strong, the rich, and the wise. Oh, the great wonder! Weak men like this, they won the strong over to their faith without violence; poor men taught the rich, and ignorant men made disciples of the wise and learned. The wisdom of the world made room for this wisdom, which is wisdom itself.
My parish bulletin
Sunday, June 13, 1999
Issue 24
