NOTES for Luk 5:1-16

The unexpected abundant catch of fish where, by all signs, there could not have been any is one of the Savior's first miracles. What is it: proof? Testimony to His own messiahship? But Jesus never sought to prove anything to anyone.

Testimony - perhaps. But testimony to what? God's power? Yes, surely: it is no accident that Peter asks Jesus to go away, to leave him. He understands that a sinful person should not draw near to God; this can end in the defiling of the holy, the profaning of that divine presence which seemed to Peter and the others an obvious reality.

But Jesus, on the contrary, calls Peter to follow Him. He knows that a person who is aware of his limitation and looks at himself soberly and realistically is more reliable than self-confident enthusiasts of spiritual life. The miraculous catch truly becomes testimony. But not only to a theophany. It becomes testimony to the Kingdom that has drawn near, whose breath can now touch the waters of the Lake of Gennesaret so that even its fish feel it.

They feel it - and gather where they usually are not. After all, the breath of the Kingdom attracts not only people; every living thing feels its presence. But if so, if the matter is the Kingdom, then Peter must not turn back. Despite his sinfulness, despite his unreadiness to follow the Messiah. Especially because no one is ready anyway: where in the fallen world can sinless people be found? But a step after the Messiah is a step into His Kingdom, where He Himself reigns.

And now He Himself will work with those who are not ready to live the life of His Kingdom but are ready to follow Him despite their unreadiness and their sinfulness. The path of righteousness has always been exactly this way, even before Christ came into the world: following God despite one's own sinfulness. Now there are different possibilities, a different, absolute fullness of life with God. But the path remains the same; even today it is possible for a person only despite his fallen nature. Not because it is nature, of course, but because it is fallen.

And so all the apostles will follow Him, beginning with Peter. To the end. To that fullness of the life of the Kingdom without which the path has no meaning.

Fishing in daylight, when fish hide from the sun, is a hopeless business, especially since Simon, an experienced fisherman, had caught nothing even at night. But Jesus catches His fish in the least suitable places and at the least suitable time. And now His main catch is not on the shore, where crowds of people were ready to listen to His parables, but in a small boat, where several people were found who were ready to leave their familiar life and follow the new Teacher to the end.

If the other evangelists emphasize that the fishermen who followed Jesus became "fishers of men" (Mark 1:17), then here, in Luke, they themselves are first of all caught in daylight - caught by His light, by the miracle of His person. For without this "absolute captivity" to the image of Jesus, they would have been unable to do anything to bring His Kingdom near and proclaim His Gospel.

Jesus gets into the boat not in order to separate Himself from those left on the shore, but so that His word will be equally accessible to everyone gathered there. The evangelist does not give the content of the sermon, but in any case the words that sounded that day over the Lake of Gennesaret led toward salvation.

And when the sermon is over, He sees to it that the fishermen who had given Him a place in the boat catch more fish. The move from preaching about the fundamental foundations of life to caring for ordinary human needs was immediate. Of course, one can see in the remarkable catch a visible parable shown to the disciples: just as successful was the catch of fish taken at His word, so successful will be the preaching of the disciples. Such an understanding of this episode is entirely acceptable, precisely because Jesus responds both to the loftiest spiritual aspirations and to requests concerning everyday material needs.

But here we meet another paradox: Simon Peter, having acknowledged himself a sinner, is called by Jesus, in response to that acknowledgment, to catch people and to go out preaching. Jesus does not leave the terrified Peter precisely because He came not to superheroes, but to ordinary people, people like any of us, in order to deliver us from sin and fear. It is hard to say what terrified Peter more: the encounter with the Holy One, or the depth of his own sinfulness. But even in terror, even begging Jesus to depart, he himself did not recoil from Him, but fell at His knees. And this is the only possible path after we become able to see our own darkness and filth.

Metropolitan Anthony, in one of his works ("The Spiritual Journey"), in the chapter on Bartimaeus, unexpectedly also speaks about today's passage on the miraculous catch, at the same time recalling the story of the healing of the centurion's servant. In other words, he points us to the spiritual closeness of these two events. We must understand what they have in common and make it a rule for our spiritual life. "It is reckless to seek a premature meeting. Therefore the whole teaching of the Orthodox Church about prayer and about conduct in life says: 'Do not seek any mystical experience; in reverent worship ask God, with all the attention and faith available to you, with all the power of hope and aspiration, to change you, to make you such that someday you may meet Him,'" Metropolitan Anthony writes.

Let us not force the Lord to reveal Himself to us. More than that, when we experience something that seems so stunning to us that we are sure this is the Lord giving a sign, this is Him, and it delights us, when we are in a state of some spiritual elation and it seems to us, here it is, the miracle, we must make a serious effort to push this experience away from ourselves, as it were, and try to step back from it. Then, if it really is something true, after our emotional sphere has calmed down, we will clearly see whether there is substance in what happened to us, or whether it is pseudomysticism, a temptation, and so on.

Peter, like the centurion, is moved by a feeling of deepest humility, by his own smallness before the face of God and his unworthiness to commune with Him. But this is precisely what the Lord values so highly, and it is precisely such a person whom He does not abandon.

The most important thing in relationships between people is trust. And in relationships between a person and God as well. Trust that sometimes proves even higher than one's own everyday and professional experience, when the experience of relationship with a person bears witness that in this concrete case trust can and should be placed above one's own everyday experience. Peter does not immediately understand who Jesus is. Later he will call Him the Messiah and the Son of the living God, but for now He is for him simply a mysterious righteous man and teacher, perhaps a prophet, but in any case a man of God, about which there can be no doubt.

And this man of God, who appears to understand nothing about fishing, while fishing on Lake Gennesaret is a very specific occupation understood only by one who has tried it, advises him to cast the net where there is no point in casting it. Absolutely none, as any fisherman on the Kinneret understands.

So what then: cast the net or not? Peter decides that it is worth trying. And the catch turns out to be unexpected, and unexpectedly large besides. Does God reward trust? Yes, one can say so. But that is not the only point.

The point is also what such trust means, what stands behind it. Whoever Peter considered Jesus to be at that concrete moment, it is obvious that he entrusted himself not only to a human being, but also to God, and to God first of all. But to entrust oneself to God means to establish with Him completely special relationships, because trust presupposes personal relationships, and personal relationships are always unique. This means they are always completely special.

And special relationships include a person in God's plan, one way or another, to one degree or another, but they necessarily include him. Then, among other things, a fisherman may well meet a shoal of fish where fish are usually not found. Simply because inclusion in God's plan means living no longer according to the laws of this world, but according to the laws of the Kingdom, even when it would seem that the Kingdom is still far away. For to God the world has always remained the Kingdom. And in the Kingdom creation is fully obedient not only to God, but also to the human being, including fish too.

In the episode of the healing of the leper, the most remarkable thing is the dialogue between Jesus and the man He healed. "If You are willing, You can make me clean." "I am willing; be made clean." How should this be understood? Is it not the sick man who comes to the Savior seeking healing from Him? On the one hand, that is exactly how it is. But the leper, as we see, evaluates his condition not only from the standpoint of physical health, but also from the standpoint of his spiritual state, from the standpoint of the Torah, which defines leprosy not only as an illness but also as a state of impurity. And, as we see, the chief thing troubling the man who turns to Jesus is precisely his impurity. Of course, impurity also prevented a full spiritual and religious life: a leper, remaining unclean for the whole time of his illness, could not take part in sacrifice, could not approach the altar, and therefore could not be sanctified.

But the man who turned to Jesus most likely understood his impurity not only in a religious sense, but also in a spiritual one. Perhaps through the experience of his own illness he understood what John the Baptist had tried to convey to the people who listened to him: no one is ready to enter the Kingdom; everyone needs conversion, cleansing from his sins, and a new sanctification, a sanctification of a measure that had previously been unattainable. And now this man defiled by leprosy understood that he would be able to be rid of his illness and enter the Kingdom only if the mysterious Stranger, of whom some thought that He was the Messiah promised by God, opened the door to him.

If that is so, then he needs to ask Him: does He want to open the door to the leper? Does He want to cleanse him? And the leper, turning to Jesus, asks Him the main question: do You need me in Your Kingdom? Do You want to cleanse me?

It is no surprise that Jesus answers "yes" to a question asked in this way. He came so that everyone who seeks the Kingdom might enter it. In such a situation there simply could be no other answer.

Today's passage about the healing of the leper gives us a remarkable and wonderful formula of prayer, preserved by all three Synoptics: If You are willing, You can make me clean. This is exactly what our prayerful request should be. We should ask God only for what He Himself wants. This is easy to understand, but how hard it is to carry out. When we have some special need, it fills the whole world, and there is only one thing in the mind: Lord, finally deliver me from this, or God, make this happen. And if it is truly something serious, then, as a rule, it does not even occur to us to ask whether our desire might be displeasing to God. It is so obvious to us that this is exactly what everyone needs right now.

Considering this phrase of the leper, one understands that, in fact, it somehow jars the ear. One wants to ask two questions. First, can God really not want a sick person to be healed? And second, one wants to ask him, do you yourself want this? The answers to these questions appear obvious. Of course, God cannot fail to want the sick to recover, and of course the sick themselves want to recover too. Yet for some reason the questions arise, making the text somehow strange. This is the special quality of the Word of God: where it catches our ear, it teaches us most of all.

When cleansing the leper, Jesus touched him, although He did not have to do this; He could have healed without touching him, for example, by a single word. By touching him, He violated the prohibition, which made the rules about ritual impurity apply to Him. So after word of the touch became widely known, Jesus had to withdraw for a time to deserted places. He Himself, of course, remained pure. But was it only power over disease, only the desire to show that He is above prohibitions, that moved Him when Jesus touched the sick man? Just imagine the joy of an outcast whom someone, perhaps for the first time in many years, had touched, breaking through the invisible but impenetrable wall between him and the surrounding world! But Jesus breaks the barriers that separate us both from God and from one another. He breaks them by taking upon Himself the consequences of the barriers' existence. His temporary withdrawal to deserted places was not as heavy a burden as the ascent to Golgotha, yet He paid for the former leper's release from isolation with His own solitude.

But from other Gospel episodes we know that Jesus' solitude was for Him a time of prayer, and hidden here is the mystery of His unity with the Father.

The evangelists quite often note one regular pattern in the Savior's earthly ministry: the more people came to Him for help, or even for a miracle, the more often and more intensely He prayed, leaving everyone for this and going away to lonely places. As one can see, His need for prayer increased as the intensity of His ministry grew. Why, it would seem, should the One who is one with His heavenly Father pray, and one with Him from the very beginning, from His very birth into the world, from His very conception? But, as one can see, the matter is not so simple. Of course, both the fullness of God and unity with the Father belonged to Jesus from the very beginning; His human will was always one with God's will to the point of complete inseparability, so that there was no rupture between them such as belongs to fallen human will.

The Savior experienced such a rupture only once, on the cross, and for Him it was a real catastrophe, worse than any physical suffering: He had never before experienced the separation of His human will from the will of His Father. Such a rupture is always an existential catastrophe, but we fallen people are so used to it that we no longer feel the abnormality of such a state. Jesus, unlike us, experiences it with extreme vividness and clarity. But at all other times He did not experience such a rupture and, it would seem, should not have needed prayer. More precisely, His whole life should have been continual prayer, or so one might think when reflecting on the Savior's spiritual life.

Yet it turns out that the unity of Jesus' human will with the will of His heavenly Father is not enough. It turns out that He needs prayer no less than each of us. And this is not surprising. Indeed, spiritual life presupposes not only being, but also awareness. The fullness of a person's spiritual life is determined by the measure of his awareness of his own existence.

And of existence on all levels, not only on one or several. In principle every person can experience a fullness of communion with God close to the one that was normal for the Savior, and in human history there have occasionally been people who, at some moment in their lives, were ready to say, "I and the Father are one."

But for an ordinary person, even if he is granted such an experience, these will be only moments, while for Jesus such a state was the norm of life even during His earthly ministry. Yet that unity had to be made conscious, had to be experienced by the whole fullness of human will. And for this Jesus needed prayer, like any of us.

And even more than any of us, because He is Man not less, but more than any of us, truly Man with a capital letter, unlike us, who by definition do not reach that capital letter. His awareness of His own existence in perfect unity with the Father was fuller than any of us can have of our communion with God. Therefore His prayer too was fuller and deeper than that of any of us. For it was prayer from fullness to fullness.