Today’s readings: Acts 5, 27-32.40-41; Apocalypse 5, 11-14; John 21, 1-19.
Resurrection is the opposite pole of a fatalistic conception of life. Even as believers, we often behave as fatalists when trapped in the unfolding of adversity in life.
It is not always easy to keep aloof and look at one’s life objectively, as if from above and outside. But this is precisely what John’s vision, as given in the second reading from the book of Apocalypse, invites us to.
John writes while in exile and from the midst of persecution. Yet he sticks to the vision that proves to be his source of strength. It is the vision of the enthroned sacrificial lamb that made him, and that makes us today, see the entire picture.
The sacrificial lamb is the key to history and to our stories. It is in contrast with the monsters and beasts representing oppressive power of all sorts. The enthronement of a sacrificial lamb is actually meant to show the subversive character our liturgies are supposed to have.
Christian liturgy, in the context of a persecuted religion, was by nature subversive in that it was meant to counter-react to imperial totalitarianism. Yet our liturgies today resemble more the imperial liturgies of a triumphant Church. They are simply a parody of what they are supposed to be.
John’s gospel today depicts the apostles as rather confused to the extent that they simply slide back in their old trade of fishing. This seems to suggest that their hopes had ended up in the tomb with Jesus, that now they were simply trying to cope as we all do having gone through stringent experiences. Many are the situations we find ourselves in when it’s not easy to realise that the Lord is still there and caring. The Lord himself is often provoking.
Without vision, as the Book of Wisdom says, we perish. The Christological symbol of the lamb is of utmost importance because it refers to the paschal lamb of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, to the messianic figure of the suffering servant in Isaiah, but mostly to the declaration by John the Baptist at the sight of Jesus: “Behold the lamb of God.” The vision remains always the source of our strength, the energiser that keeps us going.
Now in John’s vision, all is proposed within the framework of a solemn liturgy because it is only in worship that we can become intimate with the mystery which otherwise remains far-reaching for the mind. It is the more you believe, the more you see, not the other way round. It is in giving praise, honour and glory to the Lord that the Lord’s victory over death and suffering can be grasped.
The Apocalyptic cosmic liturgy so rich in symbols has as its centre of gravity the Crucified one. Yet our lives and struggles seem to gravitate around so many needs and desires that are a driving force in us but which keep us nailed to our false self.
The more we put ourselves at the centre, the less we grasp our true nature. The more we create an empty space within our hearts, the more the mist is dispelled and the Lord can step forward. This is what basically comes out from the narrative as given by John regarding the fish miracle and how the diciples’ eyes were opened to recognise him.
If we want to take John as background and foundation for understanding the true meaning of the Church as willed by Jesus Christ, it transpires clearly that the primacy of Peter was never meant to make of him a monarch, a head of state, a patriarch. It was meant to be primarily a primacy of love, a charge to care for others. As John himself suggests, it was only the indication of “the kind of death by which Peter would give glory to God”.
It is only love that keeps faith and hope alive. Without love, faith and hope can become mere ideology. It is love that makes us recover our true centre of gravity and that, like Peter, makes us enter in that intimacy with the Lord to capture fully what his calling is about. It is that intimacy that we need to recover and that makes of us resourceful people.