“That the zeal of Your Charity may be a help to my own infirmity of mind before the Lord, receive with the ears of your own minds something that, as it seems to me, is as sweet after it has been explained, as it is obscure if it is not explained. The Lord, after He had chosen His Disciples, and before His Resurrection, bade them cast their nets into the sea. They cast them, and they took such an innumerable multitude of fishes that the nets broke, and the ships being overladen were near to sinking. He did not say to them on what side they should cast their nets; but only said: “Let down your nets” (Lk. v). For had he told them to let down their nets on the right-hand side, they would have caught only the good fish; if on the left, they would have caught only the bad. Because they cast at random, neither to the left nor the right, they caught both good and bad.
This is a figure of the Church of the present time, in this world. Likewise those servants sent out to those who were invited, gong forth gathered all they found, both good and bad, and brought them in; and the marriage was filled with guests (Mt. xxii. 10). Good and bad therefore are now gathered in. And how do schisms happen, if not through the nets breaking? How are the ships overladen, if not when the Church is weighed down with the scandals of lustful disorders that wickedly disturb it?
This the Lord did before His Resurrection. But in like manner after His Resurrection He again found His Disciples fishing. He again bade them cast in their nets, but not anyhow, and at random; for now it is after the Resurrection. For after the Resurrection His Body, which is the Church, will no longer contain the bad. “Cast the net,” He says, “on the right side of the ship, and you shall find” (John xxi. 6). They cast the net, as He told them, on the right-hand side of the ship, and they caught a certain number of fish. For those caught which were not numbered are those from that draught by which the Church is signified as it now is. “I have declared, and I have spoken: they are multiplied above number (Ps. xxxix. 6). These are understood to be above the due number, and, in a measure, superfluous. Those however caught on the right-hand side are “great fishes,” and “numbered.” “He that shall do and teach,” He says, “he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. v.19). And so there were taken “great” fishes, to the number of one hundred and fifty-three.
Who does not feel that this number was not mentioned without reason? And that neither was it without meaning that the Lord should say: “Let down your nets,” or that it should concern Him that they should be cast on the right-hand side of the ship. This number one hundred and fifty-three also signifies something. And the Evangelist had a purpose in telling this, as though he were looking back to that first draught, where the broken nets foreshadowed schisms – because in the Church of eternal life there will be no schisms, because there will be no division; and all shall be “great,” for all shall be filled with charity. Therefore, looking back as it were to what had happened the first time, as portending schisms, he was at pains to say of this second draught: “And although there were so many, the net was not broken” (Jn. xxi. II)
And so what the right hand meant has been told us; namely, that they are all good. What their greatness signifies is also told; because, “he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” We are told what it means that “the net was not broken”: for in heaven there shall be no schisms. What then is the meaning of the number one hundred and fifty-three? This assuredly will not be the number of the blessed. The saints will not be limited to one hundred and fifty-three; for they alone “who were not defiled with women” are numbered “a hundred forty-four thousand” (Apoc. xiv. 1-4). This number seems to grow like a tree from a seed. The seed of this great number is in a certain lesser number, which is ten and seven. Ten and seven make a hundred and fifty-three; if you count from one to seventeen, and add up all the numbers. If you do not add up the numbers from one to seventeen, all of which you counted, there will only seventeen. But if you add them up this way, one, two, and three make six, six plus four and five make fifteen, and so on up to seventeen, you reach a total of one hundred and fifty-three.
Recall now what I reminded you of and commended to you a while ago, and think of what and Whom does ten and seven signify. Ten means the Law; seven the Holy Spirit. By this number what are we to understand, but those who will be in the Church of the eternal Resurrection, where there shall be no schisms, where death shall no more be feared […]; those therefore who will live forever with God, who have fulfilled the law by the gift of God, the grace of the Holy Spirit.”
CALL TO ACTION: Believe that in the Catholic Church every question has an answer!
Source: Quote from "The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers" (St. Augustine's Sermon for Pentecost -- "The Meaning of Pentecost," Volume III, pages 37-39; Henry Regnery Company (copyright 1959); Imprimatur: E. Morrogh Bernard, Vic. Gen. Westmonasterii; Nihil Obstat: Joannes M. T. Barton, S.T.D., L.S.S., Censor Deputatus
Photo by: Jonathan Borba