03:27
Irapuato
12.6K
On the Lake...With Jesus. by h2onews on June 15, 2011More
On the Lake...With Jesus.

by h2onews on June 15, 2011
Irapuato
It is early morning on Lake Tiberius, a fisherman pulls at his nets from his boat... and the facts narrated in the Gospel, faraway in time, become closer than ever. This is one of the most evocative holy places in all of Galilee. Here stands the Church of the Primacy of Peter, a Franciscan sanctuary which recalls one of the apparitions of the Risen Jesus ... That night, the disciples were despondent …More
It is early morning on Lake Tiberius, a fisherman pulls at his nets from his boat... and the facts narrated in the Gospel, faraway in time, become closer than ever. This is one of the most evocative holy places in all of Galilee. Here stands the Church of the Primacy of Peter, a Franciscan sanctuary which recalls one of the apparitions of the Risen Jesus ... That night, the disciples were despondent and disappointed, they had caught nothing...but then Jesus appears on the shore at dawn: "Cast your nets and you will see". With 153 large fish, they reach the shore where the master has already prepared for them bread and roasted fish. He comforts them and gives the Primacy to Peter, asking him three times "do you love me? ... feed my sheep!"All that happened here, a very old tradition says, which is also based on the important literary testimony of Egeria (IV century), who writes in her diary, among other things:"Not far (from Capharnaum) one sees the stone steps, on which the Lord stood."Mensa Christi is the name which the venerated stone under the altar of the church has taken.Friar ALEJANDRO ADOLFO WIESSE, OFM, Guide of the Holy Land: "So this rock is known as the table, the table of Christ or the table of the 12 thrones, seats of the twelve apostles ... this table, this rock recalls where Christ sets himself to eat with his disciples."The Chapel of the Primacy of Peter, restored in 1982, was built by the Custody of the Holy Land in 1933 upon the remains of a Byzantine church from IV-V centuries which had fallen with the Persian and Arab invasions. In the following centuries, many witnesses speak of a Church named from the Twelve Thrones or the Apostles. They, perhaps, refer also to these heart shaped stones which lead to the lake.The pilgrims, who today continuously, but discretely, animate this place, reread on the shore that passage from the Gospel and are moved by being here.Insert woman (senza sottopancia): "It entails imagining seeing the boat of fishermen who come and Jesus is here ... I was looking for the place where he could have been and had prepared the fire, the breakfast for them ... and then it is here that he prepares, again, food for us ...and this is very beautiful for me; there is here a further confirmation of the resurrection of Jesus. He here appeared and gave them to eat, and this is shocking for me because, after having been resurrected, he still eats—he still is—with his own...and then the Church arose, and then there is the beginning of the missions...for me it is here that we ourselves are born."