MIRACULOUS CATCH. - The miracle took place on the Lake of Genesareth, where the Lord, after instructing the crowds from one of His disciples’ two boats, told Pietro to put out into the deep and let down the nets for a catch; the Apostle replied that they had fished fruitlessly all night, but that at the Lord’s word he would cast the net. Indeed, they caught such a quantity of fish that the net was breaking, and they were compelled to call for the assistance of their companions in the other boat (Lc. 5, 1-11). Giovanni (21, 1-14) later describes another miraculous catch that occurred after the Resurrection of Christ.
Early Christian art represented the miracle of the first miraculous catch on certain sarcophagi, especially in the fragments from S. Sebastiano and the Museo di Cagliari (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, I, p. 158 and pls. 141, 2; 142, 1); it also appears in mosaics, as in the baptistery of Napoli (id., Mosaiken, pl. 30) and in S. Martino «in caelo aureo», now S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (6th cent.).
