Recognizing Christ

Friday in the Octave of Easter

Acts 4:1-12

Psalm 118

John 21:1-14

How do the disciples, in the days after the Resurrection, recognize Christ?

In the mundane things: the questions He asks of them, the things He advises they do, in the way He eats and says their names. 

Imagine if, instead of recognizing that it was Christ who ordered them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat, they thought it was just some random bystander. "Thanks for the advice!" they might have shouted. And they would have gone merrily on their way. But because their attitude was one of attentive waiting, of watchfulness, of hope, they were able to recognize Christ in the midst of this mundane activity of fishing - and then respond to him. (As an aside, sometimes I do wonder how many other people Christ may have also appeared to, but gone unnoticed, unrecognized, unremarked by - how many people saw Him without seeing, and therefore were unable to respond.)

Part of this response does mean, I think, to fulfill and complete the mundane activity which we were doing when we encountered him. Although the impetuous Peter, God bless him, leaped into the water to run to his Christ, the other disciples pulled the nets into shore. And Jesus took the fish that they had caught and cooked them so that they all might eat. 

In this way Christ blesses and fulfills the activities and events of our daily lives. We offer Him whatever "fish" we catch - the work that we do, the leisure we enjoy, the chores we perform, the art or music or writing we create - and He takes them, blesses them, and returns them to us in a sort of Eucharistic exchange: through Your goodness we receive the bread we offer, fruit of the earth and work of human hands.

And what is the blessing we receive when God returns to us what we offered Him? Why, Christ Himself! But we cannot cut out the "work of human hands" bit. Christ did not magically drop fish from the sky into the disciples' boat. The disciples had to do the work: cast the net, haul it in, struggle with it as it nearly overturned their boat. But when they did this work, and recognized it as work given to them by Christ, and offered to Christ the fruit of their work - and in doing so, they saw and experienced and received the presence of the Risen Christ.

St. Jean Vianney once said: Do nothing that you cannot offer to God. Jean-Pierre de Caussade says, There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some duty to be performed. . . If we were attentive and watchful, we should see His divine action in everything that happens to us, and rejoice in it. At each successive occurrence we should exclaim, 'It is the Lord!', and we should accept every fresh circumstance as a gift of God. The rule is simple: if we offer ourselves to God, God will offer Himself to us - or, more precisely, if we offer ourselves to God we will be able to see that God is always and everywhere offering Himself to us.

Practically speaking, this means that we must live lives of gratitude, knowing that hidden under the veil of each moment Christ waits to give Himself to us if only we will receive Him. We must live lives of service, recognizing that everything we do or endure can be a sacrifice which we can offer to God. At each demand, each difficulty, even each suffering placed on us by others or by circumstance, we must be ready to cry out, It is the Lord! and ask ourselves how God is showing His love to us in this situation, and how He is asking us to respond.