26 May 2023
Memorial of Saint Philip Neri, Priest
Breakfast is never mentioned in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. The Exercises acknowledge only lunch and dinner, taking it for granted that retreatants would not be breaking their fast. The Bible, likewise, makes no mention of breakfast, except in only one place: the 21st chapter of John’s gospel. There it tells us that St. Peter and the other disciples spent the entire night fishing. When dawn broke the risen Christ appeared to them from the shore, telling them to cast their net on the right side. Then he summoned them to join him for a breakfast of bread and fish which he was already preparing for them over a fire. The second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, invited those fishermen to join him for breakfast.
This is your invitation to a prayer breakfast with Jesus Christ and his fishermen. You might skip breakfast one morning and spend 30 minutes meditating on that historic breakfast on the beach, re-reading John 21, picturing the sand and the fire and the bread and the fish and Jesus and the men wet and sandy. Or, alternatively, you might actually eat breakfast one morning, but in a prayerful fashion, alone and in silence, calling to mind the same scene.
The United States Army used to advertise that they “do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.” You will do even more than that if you give 30 minutes of your time in the morning to Jesus Christ in prayer.