Today Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of John (21: 1-14) in which Jesus cooks breakfast for his friends on the shore of the Sea of Tiberius.

Fr Paul says this Gospel brings an end to the Gospel of John and it presents a lovely scene of the disciples being re-united with their Risen Lord. It also shows an extraordinary link to Luke’s version of the Call of the Disciples: here you have the same unsuccessful fishing all night, then success when Jesus commands, and then the commission to proclaim the Gospel.

As in so many encounters with the Risen Christ, he is an awesome figure, the same person but mysteriously changed, so we again hear that the disciples have difficulty in recognising him.

While Matthew’s Gospel concludes with a promise that the Risen Christ will be always with his Church, this Gospel paints Christ nourishing the Church – Jesus feeds his followers at the picnic breakfast.

One mystery in this Gospel is why the writer mentions that there was exactly 153 fish?

For our reflection today, Fr Paul invites us to make some time today and imagine we are sitting with Jesus by the fire on the lake side…we might ask ourselves, ‘What would you talk about with the risen Lord?’