Third Sunday Of Easter, Year C- "You Will Find Something” John 21:6

They caught one hundred fifty-three large fish.

Why was the actual number mentioned, does it mean something? Theories abound, with most saying it’s an allegorical number. For example, St. Jerome saw 153 as representing all the known fish species which represents the catholicity or universality and completeness of the church. St. Augustine used math to say it represented the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit and the 10 Commandments.

The three commercially important species then and now that they fished for in the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias, are Sardines, Tilapia, and three types of Biny, which look like Catfish since they have whiskers.

1. I ask, in the spirit of allegory, were the large fish sardines?

Some can be large, but the one’s there are small, and sardines and bread were the staple food of the locals, which reminds me that, my mom, totally on her own, not influenced by Trader Joe’s, made sardine sandwiches for my brother's and my school lunches when I was in high school solely because my mom liked them and knew that they were nutritious.

She would also make egg salad sandwiches and the other kids at school never made fun of us. In fact, they were amazed and thought it very interesting as all they got was the standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

On this topic, Janet A. Zimmerman, shared:

This reminds me of a great scene in a novel, Secrets of the Tsil Cafe by Thomas Fox Averill. The narrator, whose father owns a restaurant that serves only foods from the New World, gets tamales for his lunch and ends up getting in a schoolyard fight over his strange food. The next day, he throws his lunch away, and then he begs his mother for a normal lunch. He continues, "The next day, my mother gave me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a small bag of potato chips, and two Twinkies. I sat in the lunchroom and tried to eat the unfamiliar food. The sandwich tasted like a sweet sponge, the potato chips like salt, the Twinkies like sugar. Everything had the same texture: no texture at all. Nothing was rich, complicated. But nobody teased me on the playground." Then he goes home and asks his father for some tamales.1

The lesson on the littleness of sardines is “do not despise these little ones” Matthew 18:10. Look for the risen Jesus among the marginalized. So many Catholic high schoolers go on mission trips south of the boarder to serve and pray with others, in poor communities. These Catholic youth work in the sun, stay off their phones, eat the local cuisine, and say it was the best time of their lives.

2). Could some of the one hundred fifty-three large fish they caught be Tilapia? Yes, absolutely because they can grow up to a foot-and-half.

Tilapia is what Jesus cooked for Easter breakfast. “They saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread.” John 21:9. Sit, eat, and linger with Jesus.

To illustrate, a missionary named Stuart Sacks tells of working in Paraguay with the Maka Indians. One day a Maka Indian man named Rafael came to visit. When Sacks asked Rafael what he wanted; Rafael replied in his language, "I don't want anything; I have just come near." Rafael just wanted to sit on Sack’s porch and be near his new friend. He just wanted to enjoy his presence. 2

In primitive Christian iconography, meals of bread and fish (rather than bread and wine) were the standard pictorial symbols of the Eucharist.

Christian spirituality flows from the Eucharist as its source, the way light streams forth from the sun, and it’s ordered to the Eucharist as its summit or highpoint – that to which all of our actions should ultimately be directed.

3). Lastly, could some of the large fish be among the three types of Biny, which look like Catfish?

Yes, they are very common there and these large fish are frequently consumed during Sabbath meals and other Jewish feasts.

The sabbath for us is Sunday, which is the first day of the week, the day on which the first Christians did “the breaking of bread” or Mass.

After creating, God rests on the sabbath as a reminder that Sunday rest is so work will not become something of an addiction or an obsession. Saint John Paul II called for us to “rediscover Sunday” is an essential part of getting to know God and ourselves once again.

It will also affect politics. As Father Neuhaus observed, religion is the root of culture, culture the root of politics. We have our attention and priorities backwards, and then we wonder “what’s wrong with the world.”

The Catechism candidly expresses that the Sabbath Day is “a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money” (2712).