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| Detail of miniature, S. Netherlands, 15th c. |
I
“Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach” (Jn. 21:4). As the day dawns, “the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16, cf. 2 Pt. 1:19), the light who is not overcome by darkness, the risen Lord, stands on the shore. He stood by the Sea of Tiberias, and they saw his glory, but they did not yet “see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2), as he will be revealed on that other shore of “the end of the age” (cf. Mt. 13:47–50). It is not yet that Day when “there will be no more night,” but very early in the morning they glimpse the one who “will be their light” (Rev. 22:5).
II
By the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus says to the seven disciples, “Come and have breakfast” (Jn. 21:12). They saw “a charcoal fire” with “fish on it, and bread,” provided by the Lord himself; to these he asks them to add some of the one hundred and fifty-three fish they had just caught at his word (21:9–10). And as he did by the same sea before his resurrection (6:1–13), the risen Lord “took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish” (21:13). He who said, “Whoever eats me will live because of me” (6:57), feeds the seven by the sea.
III
The seven are fed by the risen Lord, “the Fish, which was raised from the deep to be the food” of the faithful.* Jesus, “the bread that came down from heaven” (6:58), feeds them. To what he himself provides, he adds the fish received as his gift. He feeds them that they might “abide in him” and he in them (6:56). As Augustine puts it, “The fish roasted is Christ having suffered; he himself also is the bread that comes down from heaven. With him is incorporated the Church to participate in everlasting blessedness.”† The breakfast on the beach is a foretaste of “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9).
* Augustine, Conf. 13.23.34.
† Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 123.2: “Piscis assus, Christus est passus. Ipse est et panis qui de coelo descendit. Huic incorporatur Ecclesia ad participandam beatitudinem sempiternam.”
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