Daily Reading for April 26 • The Third Sunday of Easter
There he was. In the midst, though the doors were still firmly bolted. He was familiar, yet different. . . . “Have you anything to eat?” And he “ate before their eyes.” How often had they shared a meal! How important it is for friends to share a meal, to break bread! This communion in the neediness of our humanity—how it feeds our relationship! Now the Risen Friend would enter again into this basic human communion, even after he had left the human way of mortal life that needed to be so sustained. He let them serve him. It would be their gift of food. He would be the receiver. They would know well that it was the food of the ordinary person. A piece of grilled fish. This Divine Fish, the ICHTHUS, grilled on the fire of the wood of the cross, took their humble offering of fish. This time he would not bless and multiply it to fill many empty stomachs. Rather, he would eat it himself to fulfill the hope in those who surrounded him and to take away the emptiness that death had left in their lives.
Their eyes were fixed upon him as he bit into the fish in the old familiar way. They watched him chew, and the swallowing. The fish was truly consumed, and so was their doubt. I suspect then that those who had held back when he urged them to touch now rushed forward, all seeking a place in his expansive arms. He was indeed their Jesus, their Master. He was here, he was risen.
From Breaking Bread: The Table Talk of Jesus by M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986).