Dan Allen ’07, ’11 M.Div.
Spirituality Program Director, Notre Dame Alumni Association

Tonight, I write overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The scene is peaceful and serene with gentle sounds of wildlife in the distance and the lights from a few fishing boats illuminating the otherwise black and placid surface of the water. My mind bounces between the Gospel stories, of all that took place here on this small body of water. I think especially tonight of the stories of the disciples fishing all night only to catch nothing and then to have Jesus reverse their fortunes upon his arrival in the morning.

Fishing has often been a part of my life. Some of my best childhood memories took place with a fishing pole in my hand and someone important to me by my side. I especially liked to fish at night because I could stay up as late as I could handle and because the fish could be more active after sundown. I would share some of the unbelievably funny stories from those excursions, but you know what they say about fishing stories!

Some of those memories came to me this morning as we set sail on a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Of all the bodies of water in which I have fished or seen in my life, this was obviously very special because Jesus and his disciples spent a great deal of time here. And my fellow pilgrims and I had the amazing experience of having Mass on the boat with the Gospel telling of when Jesus gave his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. I imagined how Jesus and his followers sailed on these same waters and how the same surrounding hills heard the words that we were hearing.

We then came up to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, and I found myself thinking in two ways. On the one hand, it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for us to receive Jesus in this place, but on the other, this gift of the Eucharist is something that we have been given often in life. You see, not everyone can come to visit the Holy Land, but we all have the offer and occasion to receive the Lord in his Eucharistic presence. It is an amazing gift, one that is offered at Masses all over the world. The genius of it is that each time, wherever we are, Jesus comes to us and feeds us.

This theme of God’s desire to feed us came up other times today as well. We visited a church where Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves is commemorated, including a stone on the floor traditionally held to be the spot where he blessed the five loaves and two fish. Think about the scene. There were thousands of people following Jesus, amazed at his miracles and enraptured by his words, but they could not stay with him indefinitely without eating. In John’s account of the story, Jesus then takes the humble offering of a boy and transforms it to feed thousands.

I love that little detail of this relationship between the boy’s gift and Jesus’ miracle. It is instructive to us, especially during Lent. After all, our simple practices of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer can seem insignificant, but when they are intertwined with God’s action, they can become something greater than we could have imagined. Our collective living of Lent can lead to a transformation in our lives, relationships, the Church, and our world. It is imperative, though, that we put our offering in God’s hands instead of trying to accomplish everything ourselves.

The final time that the topic of feeding was present today was at a church called Peter’s Primacy, where Jesus, in his resurrected state, instructed Peter to “feed my sheep” even after Peter had denied him. That is what the Church is called to do even today, to nourish people spiritually on their journey to heaven. Painfully, we have all been living in a time where some in the Church have completely lost sight of that mission and instead have used their power to abuse. I was talking tonight with one of my fellow pilgrims, and she noted that part of the lesson of the scene on the seashore today was that it was time for us to get back to basics, to focus on the primary mission of the Church.

We all have an invitation to be a part of that, to put out into the deep and go fishing. We must reach out to one another, knowing that we all are sometimes lost, broken, hurting, and confused. When we ask our Heavenly Father for our daily bread, we have a responsibility to give that bread to others as well, to be an answer to someone else’s same prayer. This is how we will renew the Church and our world. As we bond together in moments of human solidarity, we will become like a strong net, capable of catching many, many fish.