The Lord's interaction with creation and his post-resurrection appearances

After it was said that it is appropriate for an animal millstone to be hung by its neck and cast into the sea, or that one of these little ones should be scandalized, we will show that the Lord accepts even the worm and calls it good; for this is his own creature. For teaching his disciples, he says: 'If a son asks his father for bread, will he not give him a stone? And if he asks for a fish, will he not give him a serpent? And if he asks for a worm, will he not give him a scorpion?' (Matt 7:9-10). And he immediately proceeds: 'If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, and so on.' Do you see how he called bread, worm, and small fish good, because they are the creatures of a good God? But you, through your contentious spirit, seek to show the offspring of the Creator to be a maker of evils, but no one is good according to the Gospel except God alone; and being good, He abundantly created all good things.

And it was sufficient indeed to convince all men of this, that the Creator of all things made all things for the use and enjoyment of men, and that He sanctified His own creatures, just as the Word demonstrated. But we shall teach the children of the church more things, and we shall rebuke those who are always opposing and acting lawlessly toward God; we shall convince each person that our Lord Jesus Christ, even until His passion, ate meat and nowhere throughout the whole of His incarnate economy did He loathe or forbid eating such things. For what does the Gospel say? At the first of the Unleavened, His disciples approached Him, saying, when they were sacrificing the Passover: 'Rabbi, where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?' (Luke 22:8). But which of men most faithful is ignorant of this Passover? For He showed, both through the season and through the Unleavened, the lamb being sacrificed, which the law showed; for it was necessary that the law be fulfilled through this Passover and that the new covenant take its beginning through the true Lamb. And the apostles, having been sent, prepared the lawful Passover, which the Lord says with His own disciples: 'With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, because in the past times of the incarnate economy, in each year, they ate the Passover' (Luke 22:15). For it was not possible to neglect this; for it is written in Luke: 'As He was ascending into Jerusalem...'

The custom of the feast. However, they did not eat this with such desire because their own Passover was still far off; but when the grace of the human race drew near and he was about to deliver himself for the life of the world, he ate the Passover with great desire among his disciples. It is thus shown also in this that our Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples, even until his passion, partook of his creatures; rather, the Lord himself, through his own goodness and economy, sanctified his own creatures.

And these things indeed were so until the passion. But what of after the resurrection? So that no one might disbelieve the economy, nor think anyone that the Lord had arrived among the human race without flesh; after his rising from the dead, he appears to his disciples and shows them the marks of the nails and the wound of the side, which he received from the soldier with the spear. And again after these things he makes himself manifest to his disciples upon the sea of Tiberias.

For the holy John the Evangelist says thus: Peter, Thomas who is called Didymus, and Nathanael from Cana of Galilee, about whom the Lord testified, 'Behold, truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit' (John 1:47), were there also, and the sons of Zebedee, John and James, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter says to them, 'I am going fishing.' They say to him, 'We will come also with you.' So they went out and went up into the boat immediately, and in that night they caught nothing. But when it became morning, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus says to them, 'Children, do you have any food?' They answered him, 'No.' Jesus says to them, 'Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find.' So they cast, and they were no longer able to haul it in because of the multitude of fish. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved, that is, John himself, says, 'It is the Lord' (John 21:7). Simon Peter, having heard that it is the Lord, took the garment and girded himself, for he was naked, and threw himself into the sea; but the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but as from two hundred fathoms, hauling the...