153 Fish

Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore, full of big fish, 153 of them. But strange that number: 153. What strange precision. What peculiar and fastidious exactitude. What hidden mathematical symbol, what esoteric code is this? What has the beloved disciple’s gospel hidden for us in this net of full of  fish? For it is the “measurement of the fish,” the vesical piscis mandorla. And as the year begins on the first day of the week, on the Lord’s Day, Sunday, we begin with Christ within the circles. And in the beginning there was the sacred name, the holy Tetragrammaton, 153 times in the book of beginnings. A triangle number for multiplied trinity. Let us think on this: it is the number of mental processes and intelligence, logic and abstract thought. This is a problem we have not yet solved.

And though there were so many, the net was not torn.