May 04, 2025
Dear Friends,
One of my favorite details in the resurrection accounts that some of the evangelists share with us is the role of food in the encounters between the Risen Christ and his disciples. St. Luke describes the journey of two disciples from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus with a stranger three days after the crucifixion of Jesus. It is only when they sit down to eat with the stranger, and he breaks bread with them, that they recognize him as the Risen Christ. (Lk 24:13-35) Luke then recounts an appearance of the Risen Christ to his disciples gathered in Jerusalem. In response to the amazement of the disciples, Jesus ate a piece of baked fish in front of them. (Lk 24:36-43)
In the resurrection encounter we hear proclaimed this Sunday, St. John also includes a detail about food. The evangelist writes that when the disciples came ashore, “they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread.” (Jn 21:9) The Risen Jesus then said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” When they had finished eating, Jesus questioned Peter about his love for the Lord and commissioned him to care for the sheep of Christ’s fold.
I couldn’t help thinking about these descriptions of food in the resurrection narratives as I sat down to share a meal last weekend with the 40 third graders from our joint St. Maria Goretti/St. Joseph Christian Formation Program (CFP) who will be receiving the Holy Eucharist for the first time during this Easter season and their parents. As I talked with the children about what they are about to experience, I sensed the Lord Jesus inviting them, as he did his first disciples nearly 2,000 years ago, to share a meal with him.
Of course, the meal Jesus will prepare and share with these children in the coming weeks, and which he prepares and shares with us Sunday after Sunday, does not consist of fish and bread. Instead, the meal that the Risen Jesus invites us to share with him is the sacrament of his presence among us, the gift of the Holy Eucharist.
For those of us who have had the opportunity to receive the Holy Eucharist for years, if not decades, the account of Jesus having breakfast with his disciples on the shore of Sea of Tiberias is a powerful reminder of how the Risen Lord comes to meet us and commune with us, especially in moments of disappointment and exhaustion. After all, the disciples were disappointed and exhausted because they had worked all night and had caught nothing. Hearing the stranger on the shore tell them to cast their nets again may have seemed a desperate or futile act to them.
But as is always the case with the Risen Jesus, his words create new possibilities and open new horizons. That is why our celebration of the Holy Eucharist also includes the solemn proclamation of the Word of God. As we listen to the Lord speak to us through the Scripture readings, we are blessed and privileged that Jesus addresses his words of life and hope to us. After all, it is his word and his presence among us that can turn our disappointments into joy and our exhaustion into renewed vitality.
And, like the disciples’ encounters with the Risen Jesus, our communal encounter with him in the Sunday celebration of the Holy Eucharist is meant to lead us to fend and tend to the needs of others. In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear how Peter and the other disciples bore witness, together with the Holy Spirit, to all that God had done through the Risen Christ.
In our own day, you and I are called to allow the Spirit of the Risen Jesus to make of our lives a living witness to God’s ongoing presence and action in our world. The encounter which so many of our young ones will have with the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist for the first time during these weeks, and which we ourselves are invited to have Sunday after Sunday, is meant to nourish and enliven us, so that we can serve and care for each other and our world. As we listen to Jesus console and challenge us, and as he deepens his communion with us through the sacred meal he shares with us, we are commissioned to console and challenge our hurting and hurtful world, by deepening our communion with all our sisters and brothers.
Peace,
Father Leo