Read the instructions. Yes.
What do they say? What do you read?
Outside it says “Catholic Church”, but what do we read inside?
In the Gospel of Mark and Matthew: “Fishers of men”.
In the Gospel of Luke, today’s Gospel: “You will be catching men”.
Luke is very refined in his writings and has picked up a verb not so easy to translate. The Greek verb “ζωγρέω” is in fact a combination of two words, “ζωός” – meaning ‘alive’ or ‘living’ - and “ἀγρεύω” – meaning ‘to catch’ or ‘to capture’.
Literally the instructions say: “You will capture men alive”, “grant to those you will capture the grace to be alive”.
What is the significance of all of this for me and for you?
First of all, it means that we are in a battlefield. The same verb is used only one other time in the New Testament where it refers to those who have been captured by Satan and need to be rescued. In the Old Testament there are many references to military expeditions where seized prisoners of war are to be spared and remain alive. The Church exists because there is an enemy and her mission is to rescue those who have fallen prisoners of the devil, who believe in his lies, who keep tripping in his traps, cheated by his tricks.
What it also means, given the immediate context of fishing, is that Simon Peter is not to catch dead fish from a lake but to capture alive men and women who are drowning in the waters of death. The Church exists because death is real, we experience it, we know what it means to live in a marriage without love, we know what it feels like when we cannot forgive someone, we taste death when we sin. The mission of the Church is to pull us out of death, to free us from a life condemned to resentments, judgments, anger and sadness.
It is the Jubilee Year, the Year of Hope.
The instructions have not changed!
Fr Ivano
