Welcome to the Church of the Nativity family. Since its dedication on October 21, 1989, our community has faithfully committed to our mission: We are a praying, learning and caring community fulfilling the mission God gives us in baptism by our worship in faith, by our witness in hope, and by our service in love. We invite you to journey with our community in Christ, thus will be said, “Day by Day the Lord added to their number” (Acts 2:47). Our Nativity School is led by faith-filled, loving professional staff who provide not only excellence in academics for our children so that they may excel in life, but help cultivate and form our children to come to know, love and serve God through the gifts God has blessed each of them. We are a Dynamic Parish and look forward to walking with you and your family to pray, worship, and give thanks to God for the many blessings He has bestowed upon us. In joy and in sorrow, we will live out together the witness of faith, hope and charity. At the Church of the Nativity, there will always be room “in the inn” (Luke 2,7).
Greetings in the Lord
On this third Sunday of Easter I wish to continue my reflections on the experiences of the Apostles after the death and resurrection of their Master, Jesus Christ – Our Lord. Last Sunday we read from the gospel of St. John how Jesus appeared to the Apostles who, for fear of the Jews, were hiding in a room. In that appearance Jesus greeted them with peace, breathed on them the Holy Spirit of forgiveness as the source of Peace for their fearful hearts and sent them on a mission to spread this message of peace. Furthermore, we heard how Thomas was made to believe in Jesus when he returned to the same group of Apostles who were still gathered in the same room, already believing but not yet courageous to go out and proclaim the message of Peace that Jesus sent them to spread.
Today’s gospel reading shows us a number of the apostles to whom Jesus once more appeared. In this we see the apostles no longer gathered in a closed room but already out in the open and back to their former way of living as fishermen. There are many theories concerning this narrative. Some say that the apostles simply wanted to forget their experiences with Jesus who was crucified, died and reportedly have risen from the dead. Others believe that this was another way by which John the Evangelist wanted to portray how the gospel message should be proclaimed by the apostles after the resurrection of Jesus. Personally, I do believe that the apostles did not want to forget about Jesus at all, but I do think that they went fishing in order to start their mission in the original way of life that they had when Jesus called them to follow him. They were fishermen and they should have wanted to begin their mission of spreading the good news among the people whose trade they commonly shared.
After a frustratingly disappointing night of fishing and catching nothing, the apostles still obeyed the command of a person whom they, at first, did not recognize as Jesus. Jesus asked them to throw the net into the deep and they did obey him without hesitation and caught a definite number of big fishes, to their amazement that led them to recognize that the person who commanded them was no other than their own Master and Lord. He was there watching them go fishing and catching nothing. And they were not aware of His presence because they were all concerned with their activity and they caught nothing. When they went ashore they saw He prepared for them something to eat for breakfast. This time they did not ask any question anymore because they were convinced that indeed Jesus was their in their midst.
There are so many lessons that we can learn from this appearance of Jesus. I don’t even want to mention his dialogue with Peter whom he asked to feed his sheep after three very significant personal questions. That is a matter that could be a subject for another homily sometime. What concerns me now are two things: first, the fact that apostles decided to go back to fishing, original livelihood and second, how they promptly obeyed Jesus whom they did not even recognize at first. Why should they obey somebody they did not recognize and after such a very disappointing night when they could not catch anything if they were not expecting the Lord to come into their lives anytime?
These two issues could be our lessons from today’s gospel. The first is to simply go back into the ordinary ways of life that we normally do. Every Christian should go back to his work, always conscious that the Lord is just there watching and looking at how we do our work no matter how we may apparently fail. Yet every Christian, just the apostles in the Gospel must be ready to obey when the Lord comes into our lives and do whatever he wants because, just like the apostles, we too will be able to produce a lot out of our work without expecting such results. If the apostles obeyed the command of the Lord whom they did not recognize at first, I believe, it was because they were open to His instant coming into their lives. This is a product of a deep faith that they have been gifted because of their faith in the Risen Lord who would come into their lives anytime He would want to. In this same manner while we continue in our journey in this vale of tears.
Constancy in prayer and fidelity to the Lord would keep us open to his coming into our lives especially at moments we do not expect Him to appear.