It’s one of those small Gospel details that is easy to overlook. After the Resurrection, when Jesus appears to His disciples, He does something unexpected...He eats. Specifically, He eats fish.
In the Gospel of Luke, we are told: “They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them” (Luke 24:42–43). At first glance, it seems almost unnecessary. If Christ has risen from the dead, why pause to include something so ordinary?
But Scripture does not include details like this by accident.
The disciples, at this point, are not simply joyful—they are confused. They are seeing something they cannot fully comprehend. Luke tells us they were “startled and frightened,” even thinking they might be seeing a spirit. Jesus responds in a very human way. He shows them His hands and His feet. He invites them to touch Him. And then—He eats. Not because He needs to, but because they need to see it.
The Catechism explains this moment with clarity: “Jesus did not return to earthly life… but he showed himself to his disciples with the marks of his Passion… He converses with them and eats with them” (CCC 645). The Resurrection is not symbolic. Christ did not rise as an idea. He rose in His body. Eating the fish becomes a small but powerful proof: this is not a ghost, not a vision, not a memory. This is Jesus, alive.
There is something else here as well. Throughout the Gospels, meals matter. Christ teaches, forgives, and reveals Himself at the table. After the Resurrection, He continues this pattern. He meets His disciples not in spectacle, but in something familiar—shared food, fish, the common food of the area, and shared presence. It is not so different from how He meets us now, often in ordinary ways we might overlook.
The detail of the fish reminds us that the Resurrection is not distant from our lives. It is not abstract. It enters into the ordinary. Christ rises—and then sits down and eats with His friends.
It is a small detail, but it tells us something essential: the risen life is not less real than this one. It is more.
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