A mother proudly told her pastor: “My teenage son has finally learned one bible verse: It’s Luke 24, verse 41, from today’s Gospel, where Jesus says to his disciples, “Have you anything here to eat?”
Literally, in the Greek, it’s “anything edible,” so they looked around, and most likely gave him some left over broiled fish from their evening meal. So, Jesus eats leftovers!
What are you feeding your spirit man? Your spirit woman? Regular TV or something wholesome?
Incidentally, this passage drives some strict vegetarians crazy that Jesus did actually eat fish—an animal. The purpose is to show incarnational or sacramental theology—that matter and spirit are related.
Our text says: “They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”
That is why Jesus eat in front of them, to show that his body was not just being moved around like a puppet by some kind of spirit. Jesus establishes his physical reality by eating fish in front of them.1
Useful experiment: Ask a class of juniors and seniors in a Christian high school to say what heaven is like and you are likely to encounter a classroom of slightly deranged Platonists- where heaven is viewed primarily as a spiritual entity.2
We should be startled that heaven has both spiritual and physical dimensions.
The risen Christ physically could pass through doors, walls, water, etc.
In heaven, if my soul desires to visit St. Joseph, 1,000 miles away, and there I am.
St. Thomas Aquinas asks if we will be blinded by the light of glorified bodies. His answer: “Though the clarity of a glorified body surpasses the clarity of the sun, it does not by its nature disturb the sight but soothes it: wherefore this clarity is compared to the jasper-stone [which is as clear as crystal. Revelation 21:11].” The saints will dazzle, stun, enthrall. Whatever they look like, they will be awesome in beauty.
In heaven, we will all be “thirty-somethings!” Christ, who rose in the body of a man who lived to his early thirties, “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body,” Philippians 3:21 says. We will be, quite literally, be conformed to the image of the Son as Romans 8:29 says. Historian Caroline Walker Bynum elaborates that each person reaches his or her own peak of perfection at thirty (or thirty-three) and rises [in the resurrection to eternal life] therefore in the moment at which self is most fully manifest [is between thirty and thirty-three].”3
2. Incarnational spirituality also entails extending nourishment to those in whom Jesus is really present. This "requires a commitment to the earthly lives of people" — in the spirit of giving food to visiting strangers because the risen Lord identifies himself with them.”4
This includes spiritual food: Our Gospel instructs us that we are to communicate “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins [that] would be preached in his name to all the nations.”
Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, with the desire and resolution to change one's life, with hope and trust in the help of his grace.
God does not tolerate sin except as an evil that can be forgiven; 1 John 1:17 says if we confess our sins; the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
E.g. the question, “Can I contracept in my marriage and not use natural family planning if I have a medical condition so I can avoid a high-risk pregnancy?” Despite the fact this is a very difficult situation, we’re never permitted to do evil in order to bring about a greater good. Since the act of contraception is intrinsically evil, it may never be done for the sake of some greater good (see the Catechism 2399). St. Pope Paul VI addressed this question in his 1968 encyclical Humane Vitae. For married couples in this situation, you might want to contact the Pope Paul VI Institute. Its personnel can lead one to the right doctors and moral medicinal methods to possibly correct the situation that keeps one from being able to practice NFP.
When Can I Act Forgiven? Performative utterances do things. Jesus forgives you for mortal sins with absolution in confession. After your healed , then it’s time to reveal. Jesus send us out with the good news of repentance and forgiveness, as agents of new life.
“You are witnesses of these things." We get the word “martyr” from the Greek word for witness.
It wasn’t simply the facts that convinced them, but they needed to experience Jesus face to face that he truly was resurrected.
It is showing rather than telling.5
E.g. there is an African-American spiritual sung in some churches during the Christmas season "Go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere; go, tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born."
One lady wasn’t ready to be witness telling it on a mountain, so she started being a witness to inanimate objects as practice. She was found testifying to her faith before a wooden Indian statue in front of a cigar store. She was chided for the scene she created and then defended herself by saying: “I would rather be a real Christian and talk religion to a wooden Indian than a wooden Christian who never talked religion to anyone!”6
Luke says that their "eyes were opened," and in that phrase we must hear as the opposite of the opening of the eyes of Adam and Eve after the Fall.
To illustrate:
Ten years ago Carl VandeGiessen lost his wife, Ruth, after her long battle with Alzheimer’s. Carl had sat at her bedside every day, even in the long years when she hadn’t known him. “This is what I took my wedding vows for,” he would tell me.
They had met in the Epworth League of the old Methodist Church, raised beagles together, traveled together and maintained the romance of their marriage. When she died during Holy Week, it seemed to unnerve his only daughter. I meant to console him when I said, “Carl, I’m sorry. It’s especially hard to lose her this time of year.”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “This is the best time for my Ruthie. She’s with God now. That’s what this week is all about.”7
1. J. Fitzmeyer, Anchor Bible vol. 28A, New York, 1985
2. Cyril O'Regan, Imagining Heaven, Church Life Journal, 03/05/2024
3. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, 265
4. Gerald O'Collins, S.I., Did Jesus Eat the Fish? Gregorianum, Vol. 69, No. 1 (1988), p. 75
5. Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia; Fortress, 2009, 43
6. Jerry L. Schmalemberger, Checking The Vital Signs, 01/01/1981
7. Lawrence Wood, Above and beyond, The Christian Century, the May 17, 2003
