We continue with the aftermath of the healing of the paralytic and the commotion it stirred up. Saint Peter felt impelled to set the record straight, for the people began to look at them as demigods. Peter is quick to point out that the healing wrought through them was ultimately coming from Jesus, whom God the Father had sent into the world, and who they had crucified by handing him over to Pontius Pilate.
There was a need to be unambiguous and clear to the point, otherwise the apostles feared that the people would begin to form all kinds of crazy speculations and lose their focus. They therefore always felt impelled to bring that focus back on to Jesus. We are seeing why the Church has traditionally always been so careful not to confuse the masses, for confusion already reigns in the world. What the faithful have always needed, is the clarity of Jesus’ voice as transmitted by its faithful shepherds, beginning with the Holy Father. For this reason we ought to pray always for the Pope, so that the Holy Spirit will guide his words and actions so that clergy and the people of God alike can have a clear voice to refer to in moments of trial and tribulation. The focus needs to be brought back to Jesus, which is what Saints Peter and John did so beautifully. They asked the crowd why they were gawking at them as if the paralytic’s healing was of their own doing, and then diverted all glory to God.
In this, for starters, is an innate warning to the celebrity priests and evangelists out there who, due to their gifts of communication, can sometimes allow themselves to be extolled and placed high on a pedestal. Again, it is incumbent on all leaders, indeed on all Christians, to always revert the focus back to Jesus, who alone with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God. He is the Light… and we are “the light of the world and the salt of the earth” only in so much as we reflect his light, and this requires a lifelong journey where a concerted effort is made to remain united to Jesus. For without him we “can do nothing” John 15:5.
The gospel of today also is a continuation of the encounter of the two disciples with Jesus on their way to Emmaus, who are now back with the group, excited to report to them their heavenly encounter with the Saviour, and as they’re sharing all this with the others, Jesus stands in their midst in his radiant glory. They’re shocked. They still think they’re seeing a ghost! Again, our Lord seems unrecognizable and so as a proof that it is him, he shows them his hands and feet, and invites them to touch him so as to ascertain it's not a ghost.
This interaction with the glorious Christ is turning their world upside down, but in the most positive way imaginable. Everything they thought they knew has to be reassessed and all their priorities reexamined and placed in their proper order. Something incredibly life-changing and altering is happening before their very eyes, and they need time to take it all in.
In the meanwhile, Jesus asks for food! Huh? What? Food? You’re glorious now, risen from the dead, no need for food! A lot of people mistaken the term “resurrected” to mean merely spiritual, but everything Jesus is doing here flies in the face of that. Everything beautiful in life, including our bodies and the sustenance of food, is enhanced, elevated, in the kingdom of heaven, not diminished. Isn’t that great news for us food lovers?! Just think, Mandarin has nothing on the sweet buffets of heaven! Jesus is showing us that a resurrected, glorified body, is not mere spirit but that it can take in food and eat it as well.
Our kind Lord always finds a way to put our minds and hearts at ease. Yes, just when you thought there won’t be actual food in heaven… who knows? Joking aside, this was his way of drawing them out of their shock and fear and also a response to conspiracy theories that purported the apostles were merely hallucinating. Such theories are not uncommon in our own day, yet this eating of the fish (and perhaps even honeycomb (1), according to some ancient manuscripts of the original Greek), begs the next question to the hallucination theorists if they could all have hallucinated the exact same details. The answer is no. Negative are the findings of modern scholarship and research in neuroscience and psychology as regards this question of mass hallucination. Just as he dazzled the two on their way to Emmaus and drew them out of their despair by diving into a beautiful and deep discourse with them about “what happened,” so too here, he’s feasting on a piece of fish (and maybe honeycomb) before their very eyes. Again, our Lord who came into this world not to make life more bland or dull, but so that we may enjoy it to the full, and come to know, little by little, that it has always been a gift from above, even if that gift is at times wrapped in sorrow.
Our beloved apostles and followers of the Lord are now tasting the sweet, after enduring the bitter. But there’s more to come. We go through cycles of this bitter-sweet dynamic in our lives, until finally from the veil of tears here beneath, we definitively transition to the bliss of heavenly delight to be with the Lord forever. Saint Paul for example speaks about how the deceased will rise first and meet the Lord in the clouds when he returns, but that how soon after those still alive would join them: “After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord” 1 Thessalonians 4:17.
Continuing our Easter journey, let us ask the Lord to remain always with us even now as he promised, for there is never a dull moment when we realize that Jesus is right by our side. Halleluia, Halleluia, Halleluia! He is risen indeed. May God’s peace be with you always.
(1) Indeed, the honeycomb is present in the Textus Receptus (KJV's Greek source) but not in the manuscripts used now, according to the interlinear. Unfortunately no more detail is given than that.
'Honeycomb' is also included in Jerome's Latin Vulgate. Both the Wycliffe translation and the Douay-Rheims include it.
One theory is that some well-meaning translators omitted it, because it was already then recognized that eating fish was healthier than eating sugar, and they tried to avoid influencing the young Christians the wrong way. Another theory is that they omitted the word "honeycomb", because they wanted to emphasize the secret sign for a Christian, which was a fish. Either way, no one has the authority to omit anything that is for certain part of the original. Thus, it is to be expected that whether that is indeed the case, was highly contested in the decisions of whether one included honeycomb with the fish that Jesus was given to eat upon request. All “these guys” think he did, but there are “other guys” who make no mention of the honeycomb, like Saint Augustine.
Justin Martyr (II Century), On the Resurrection,IX: And when they were by every kind of proof persuaded that it was Himself, and in the body, they asked Him to eat with them, that they might thus still more accurately ascertain that He had in verity risen bodily; and He did eat honeycomb and fish.
Tertullian (II century), De Corona, 14: For it was after the gall He tasted the honeycomb, and He was not greeted as King of Glory in heavenly places till He had been condemned to the cross as King of the Jews, having first been made by the Father for a time a little less than the angels, and so crowned with glory and honor.
Athanasius (IV cent.), Against the Arians, IV: For certainly he who gives food to others, and they who give him, touch hands. For ‘they gave Him,’ Scripture says, ‘a piece of a broiled fish and of an honeycomb, and’ when He had ‘eaten before them, He took the remains and gave to them
Jerome (IV cent.), Letter to Eustochium: And now do you in your turn answer me these questions... How do you explain the fact that ... Peter saw the Lord standing on the shore and eating a piece of a roasted fish and a honeycomb.
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