Who is always at the centre of Christ's 'lake miracles'?
The miraculous draught was just the first of several 'lake miracles,' each of which offers symbolic meaning for the life of the Church.
The miraculous draught was just the first of several 'lake miracles,' each of which offers symbolic meaning for the life of the Church.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the sequence of lake miracles may reflect the Church’s trials and triumphs over time.
That Peter’s role in this event foreshadows his primacy and the apostolic mission to come.
Why each detail of the miraculous draught reveals deeper truths about preaching and the Church.
He shows us that the Miraculous Draught is not just a marvel, but a parable of the Church’s life in the world—until she reaches her harbour in heaven.
For more context on this section, and its place in the Gospel and the Liturgy, see the previous part.
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
The Training of the Apostles, Part I
Chapter II
St. Luke v. 1—11
Story of the Gospels, § 37
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
How Christ turned Simon Peter's trade into a parable of Christian ministry
What do St Peter's bursting nets reveal about dangers to the Church?
Details of the scene in Christian contemplation
Christian writers have dwelt with great minuteness on almost every detail in the scene of which we have been speaking, and they have found a significance in each.
The washing of the nets, on which the disciples were engaged when our Lord began to teach, is understood of the care which preachers are to take of their own souls, while they are labouring for the good of others, especially as to the most perfect disinterestedness in the discharge of their sacred duties, or again as to the desire of praise, the temptation to vainglory, or to any sacrifice to human respect in their handling of the word of God, which are so many soils and defilements which may stain the ministry of the unwary.
Again, that our Lord should have begged St. Peter to put off a little from the shore, that He might instruct the people at greater advantage, has been considered as conveying the lesson of that detachment from earthly cares and thoughts and interests which is so essential a condition of the successful preaching of the Gospel.
Again, the charge to launch out into the deep has seemed to some to allude to the deep and sublime doctrine with which the evangelical preacher must not fail to feed his hearers who have received the gift of faith, in the exercise of which on the great truths of revelation a large part of the service which they are to render to God is to consist.
The same meaning of the words of our Lord takes in also the teaching of the loftiest and most difficult of the precepts of the Gospel, the evangelical counsels, the doctrine of perfection, the beatitudes, and the like, from none of which is the preacher to shrink, when the occasion is before him, because he speaks in the name of Him with Whom all things are possible, and to Whom it is as easy to shed abundant streams of grace upon the souls of the hearers of the word as to fill the nets of the fishermen on the lake with thousands of fishes.
These may suffice as instances of the moral and spiritual meanings which have been found in the details of this beautiful miracle.
The position of St. Peter in the Church
It is also not uncommon to find the same miracle insisted on in another connection—that is, as marking a step in the implicit teaching of our Lord with regard to the position in the Church which was to be occupied by St. Peter.
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