Breakfast

I once had court duty in a distant northern town. I had to leave before sunrise in order to get to the courthouse on time. As the light spread in the east I could see smoke rising from the houses as we passed by them.  People were preparing breakfast.

I remembered that in the country, before the refrigerator came, breakfast consisted of whatever remained of the evening meal. The folk heated or fried the leftover rice, or just left it as it was, and consumed it with fish dried or stewed or salted. And it often happened, especially in the farms, that, because they had to work in the fields before the sun, breakfast came late in the morning, and took care of the lunch as well.

But those of the folk who lived off the sea, who usually came back from the ocean at dawn, would reserve some of their catch to pair it with the remnant corn or rice – fish crisp and sweet as the morning air.

The apostles had about the same breakfast on the shore of the Lake of Tiberias. This was after Christ’s Resurrection.  John writes that Simon Peter and six others had gone fishing one night and caught nothing.  At dawn they headed for the shore. Someone standing there asked them if they had caught anything. When they said no, he advised, “Cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something.” When they did such was their catch that they could hardly pull the net in.  Face-to-face with the marvelous, John recognized Jesus, “It is the Lord.”

On the shore Jesus had laid fish on charcoal fire and bread was at the ready. Jesus asked for some of the catch to put on the grill, and said, “Come, have breakfast.” John adds that none of the disciples asked Jesus who he was. They realized it was the Lord.

This, according to John, was the third appearance of the risen Christ. I consider it among the tenderest scenes in the Gospels. Jesus made no discourse, he just prepared a meal for his friends – a simple breakfast of fish and bread.  And when they had put it away, Jesus turned to Simon Peter, “Do you love me?”  He had to ask this question three times because at the courtyard of the high priest’s house, to which Jesus was brought during his Passion, Simon Peter denied knowing Jesus thrice.  And foreseeing that ultimately they would be put to death because of him, Jesus wanted to be sure of their, in particular of Simon Peter’s, commitment, fidelity, love.

What would be a perfect breakfast?  Nothing complicated for me – just rice, fish, eggs, fruit, coffee or hot chocolate (but in the case of the last, I expect additionally to have sticky rice steeped in coconut milk and wrapped with banana leaf, and definitely one or two ripe mangoes – all of which make up what for me is the traditional full Cebuano breakfast).

Years ago, whenever my brother and I visited the hometown, a brother-in-law would take us on his motorbike to the peace and quiet of a deserted shore where the wind that drove the waves and roused the mangroves poured into our ears. We would build a fire, set up the pot on a tripod of small rocks and then cook rice. When the rice was about done, two or three boats with outriggers would pull up from the sea, and when the boats were beached the men would step out of them with their pails and show us the fish they had caught, still jumping.

We would make a purchase of four or five greenish-blue mackerels, gut and scale and grill them stuffed with onions and tomatoes. And when the food was ready, we sat down and helped ourselves to it using our hands.  Of course, before everything else, we said grace, knowing that it was really the Lord who had called us to come and have breakfast.