The end of Holy Week always leaves me with great pause on my life. It’s like a surge of energy that fuels me and ignites the fire I need to go deep and pick out the areas of my life where I need to let Jesus in more fully. As I read over today’s readings a few times, I kept getting hit by one line specifically: “Jesus revealed himself again to his disciples” (John 21:1). Notice the word “reveal” is used in the plural tense, meaning more than once. Jesus seeks to reveal who He is to us not once in a blue moon, but every single day. He is there for us, just waiting on the slightest invitation we give Him to let Him in.
“It is true. I stand at the door of your heart, day, and night. Even when you are not listening, even when you doubt it could be Me, I am there: waiting for even the smallest signal of your response, even the smallest suggestion of an invitation that will permit Me to enter.” (I Thirst for You, Mother Teresa)
Knocking
How often in those moments, when we feel Jesus knocking on the door to our hearts, do we actually let our Lord reveal Himself to us? Do we brush Him off for when we have “more time” or do we doubt it is even really Him? Maybe it’s that we don’t think or believe we are worthy of His divine revelation? However, if Easter Sunday proved anything to us, it’s the depths our Lord would go through for us to know that no matter what we’ve done, no matter what sins we have committed against Him, He will never stop trying to reveal Himself to us.
We see this example at the end of today’s readings. Jesus comes back to a very similar scene, asking his own disciples to drop their nets in the waters. Though they did not recognize him at first, they listened and dropped their nets. “So, Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, ‘Come, have breakfast.’ And none of the disciples dared to ask Him, ‘Who are you?’ because they realized it was the Lord. Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.” (John 21:11-14)
He came back to them not once, but three times, just as He will always come back to us. Let us pray that when Jesus is showing up in our own lives that we, like the disciples, do not have to ask, “Who are You?” because we already know.
