Have you caught anything friends?
Each day of the octave we hear a little more of the manifestations of the risen Lord. While the gospels narrate his physical presence to the disciples soon after the resurrection, the first readings from the Acts of the Apostles narrate the working of his Spirit through the same apostles.
In today’s first thing we observe in the apparition of Jesus to his apostles his concern for their needs and his humility to lower himself and come to them in a form that they can easily relate with. He chooses the form of the earthly Jesus whom at first they cannot recognize from a distance. We can wonder whether he really made the fire in the natural way by gathering sticks and blowing on the flame. He could as easily have willed it to be there together with the fish, without having to catch them using a hook or some other natural method. He knew they were tired, frustrated and hungry, having spent a futile night, and he attended first to their human needs.
No less impressive is Jesus’ work through his apostle Peter. Everything is the old Peter who is the first to speak, and yet nothing is of the old Peter who speaks impulsively. His arguments are fearless, calculated, inspired, for he speaks under the influence of the Lord’s Spirit. The Jewish leaders were extremely annoyed, and rightly so. They had gone at great length to ensure that no claim is made that Jesus is risen, by paying off the soldiers and undertaking to sweeten their leaders. Now the apostles were bringing out their worst fears, by proclaim a risen Christ and gaining followers. If the leaders hoped to intimidate Peter and the apostles by their solemn gathering and authoritative interrogation, they got the exact opposite: a respectful yet self-assured answer that appeals to common sense: who would begrudge a poor cripple of an act of kindness done to him? Certainly not the religious leaders! This was but a prelude to the blow which Peter had prepared for the leaders: “This is the stone rejected by you the builders, but which has proved to be the keystone. For of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved.”
Jesus still responds to our material needs when we pray to him, or even in anticipation of our prayers. Yet he wants also our docility so that through the power of the Holy Spirit he may bring out the best in us, to God’s greater glory and to the salvation of his people.
