“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
A line from today’s Gospel reading (Matt. 4:12-23), and a very familiar one at that. Jesus comes to the shores of the Sea of Galilee at the very beginning of His public life, and calls local fishermen to follow Him. He promises the first two of them, Simon and Andrew, that they will no longer catch fish, but people.
In today’s liturgy, this Gospel passage is coupled with the Old Testament text from Isaiah (8:23-9:3), which is quoted in Matthew’s Gospel. The prophet writes, “upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom / a light has shone”.
Whereas regular fishermen remove their prey from the latter’s proper environment, thus condemning them to death, the fishers of men are obviously not tasked to do so: rather than take them out of the environment they live in, with the conditions necessary for living, a fisher of men promises something greater. To quote Isaiah again: “You have brought them abundant joy / and great rejoicing”.
Jesus’ call to His followers to become fishers of men can also be read as a call to all of us. If we want to follow Him, we must and will also fish for people, taking them out a “land of gloom” and bring them to “abundant joy” and “great rejoicing”. But what if we can’t? What if we find ourselves stuck in situations which form a land of gloom for us? We may try our best to follow Christ, but we all know that that does not mean we have no obstacles on our path, no problems, difficulties, even tragedy.
Maybe we sometimes find ourselves to be the fish in need of a net to lift us up, instead of the fisherman looking for people to help. Hopefully there are fishermen around us to help their fellow fishermen up when we need it.
