I. It had been by a miraculous draught of fishes, like the one now before us, that, at the outset of His ministry, Christ had drawn away three at least of the seven now around Him, from their old occupations, and taught them to understand that in following Him they were to become fishers of men. Why was that miracle repeated? Because the lesson which it enforced was needed to be again given and enforced. Now that, bereft of the companionship of Christ, deprived of the means of support, if not driven by necessity, yet tempted by opportunity, they resume their ancient calling, was it not needful and kind in Jesus to interfere, and by the repetition of that miracle, whose symbolic meaning they could not fail at once to recognise, to teach them that their first apostolic calling still held good, that still the command was upon them: "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men?"
II. The two miracles were substantially the same. Yet there were differences between them, perhaps indicative that the one, the earlier miracle, was meant to shadow forth the first formation; the latter miracle, the future and final ingathering of the Church. In the first instance, Christ was Himself in the vessel; in the second, He stood upon the shore. In the first the nets began to break and the ship to sink; in the second, nothing of the kind occurred. It may be a fancy to see in these and other diversities, the distinction between the present and visible effects of the casting forth of the gospel net upon the sands of time, and that landing and ingathering of the redeemed upon the shores of eternity. Treat this idea as we may, the image is a scriptural one, that both individually with Christians, or collectively with the Church, the present scene of things is the night of toil, through whose watches, whether fruitful or not of immediate and apparent good, we have to labour on, in hope of a coming dawn, when upon the blessed shores we shall hail the sight of the risen Lord, and share with Him in partaking of the provisions of a glorious immortality.
W. Hanna, The Forty Days,p. 108.
References: John 21:1-3. B. F. Westcott, Revelation of the Risen Lord,p. 111. Joh 21:1-14. Homilist,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 144.