Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "This is the Lord."

And when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girded himself with a garment, for he was naked, and threw himself into the lake.

The naga must have been because he was ready to jump into the water to free the nets from the stones, but he girded himself with clothes in order to appear to the Lord in a decent form. [1062]

The other disciples came in a boat (for they were not far from the shore, about two hundred cubits), dragging a net with fish. And when they came ashore, they saw a fire lit and fish and bread lying on it.

All this was once, in time, and will always be, in eternity.

"On April 9, 1913," recalls one traveler, a seeker of the Lord's footprints on St. Returning in a boat from Bethsaida, we landed on the shore, not far from the Seven Keys, where our boatmen caught two fish with their hands in a muddy pool, and, while we were going to Capernaum, made a fire on the shore rocks, and, letting it burn out, baked the fish in the heat of the coals, and when we returned, they offered us to taste it; The fish smelled a little of smoke, but it was edible. Thus we saw what John remembers." [1063]

Jesus says to the disciples, "Bring the fish that you have now caught."

This caught fish, natural, and that one in the fire, miraculous, will be united into one Eucharist, because all food in the hands of the Lord is the Eucharist.

Simon Peter went and hauled ashore a net filled with large fish, one hundred and fifty-three in number; And with such a multitude, the net did not break. (John 24:6-11).

To count to one hundred and fifty-three, what clarity of memory is needed, and how unlike "delirium" or "hallucination"!

The number of fishes – one hundred and fifty-three – means, according to the correct interpretation of Bl. Jerome, the number of all the tribes and peoples living in the world, into which the Universal Church will be united. [1064]

XII

Jesus said to them, "Come, dine." None of the disciples dared to ask Him: "Who are You?" – knowing that it was the Lord.

They know, but they are no longer afraid, as they did then, in the Upper Room of Zion, that it is not Him, but someone else – a "bodiless demon", a "ghost", a phantasma. There is no fear anymore – there is only a quiet joy, the same as in that blissfully paradisiacal morning of the coming Kingdom of God. But this paradise is already eternal; This morning is already a sunset day.