After spending Easter weekend with friends in South Carolina, I could barely get my suitcase shut.
Fuzzy socks, bags of cashews, chocolate bars studded with almonds and butter cookies were among my gifts.
On Easter morning, the dining room table was ablaze in color, with chocolate chickens and rabbits wrapped in dazzling foil, plus painted eggs and bright holy cards proclaiming the joy of the Risen Lord.
My friend Susannah had arranged this abundance of goodies and trinkets to celebrate the day, and her little girl, 10, eagerly added a few finishing touches.
Susannah has an amazingly generous spirit, which explains my bulging luggage, the oversized wedge of homemade cake that she sent me home with — and an Easter dessert featuring five flavors of ice cream.
Her gestures brought to mind God’s astounding generosity, so evident in Scripture.
The Old Testament tells us that at the creation of the world, God fashioned fish, birds, swarms of living creatures, stars dotting the night sky, the luminescent, ever-changing moon and trees of every kind.
My favorite scene in the New Testament comes in St. John’s Gospel after the Resurrection, when Peter and John and other apostles are in their boat and spot a man on the shore, who calls out, “Children, have you any fish?”
When they realize it’s Jesus, they get extremely excited and start rowing toward him. Peter, always impulsive, leaps from the boat and swims toward his friend, hoping to outpace the others.
On the shore, Jesus has made a charcoal fire and is roasting fish, which he feeds his friends — along with bread — since they’ve been out all night and are surely famished.
This jewel of a scene reminds me that we’re all hungry children in God’s eyes, and he’s eager to feed us.
To me, it also echoes the moment when Jesus brought Jairus’ daughter back to life, and immediately instructed her parents to get her food. It wasn’t enough that he’d generously restored her life — he also yearned to nurture her.
The night before he died, Christ didn’t gather his friends to provide an in-depth plan for future evangelizing.
Instead, he shared a simple meal with them, consisting of bread and wine, which he called his body and blood.
He also gave them a precept that became the heart of Christianity: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
As his friends would later discover, this love meant more than humbling themselves to wash feet, more than healing the sick and casting out demons. You see, nearly all the disciples would die gruesome deaths rather than deny Christ.
After breakfast on the shore, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?
True, this fellow had vehemently denied knowing Christ before the crucifixion, but now he made amends: “You know that I love you.”
And three times that day, Christ told Peter, “Feed my sheep.”
Today we’re still called to tend God’s sheep — whether this means a poor man on the street holding a handmade sign, starving children in the Middle East, whose lives are in shambles—or a guest dining in our home.
Sometimes we need look no further than our own families, where a spouse may be suffering from depression, a child may feel neglected or an elderly relative may be struggling to accept the diminishments of aging.
“If you want to bring happiness to the whole world, go home and love your family,” said Mother Teresa.
Emptying the dishwasher, making someone a cup of tea, fixing a special treat are all ways to show our affection for people closest to us.
And when we get discouraged, burned out, disappointed or cynical, let’s remember God’s love is so amazing and abundant that he became human and died for us.
Whenever he asks whether we cherish him, I pray my answer will always be, “Yes, Lord, you know I do.”
And whenever I discover his sheep yearning for food, shelter and tenderness, may I stand on a nearby shore, invite them closer— and become Christ for them.
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