Luke 24:37

But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they beheld a spirit.

See under preceding verse. It was incumbent upon Jesus to win over the apostles to a complete and unfailing faith in his resurrection; and so, in these verses, one beholds the Son of God actually laying the keel, in a figure, of that ship of the church which would sail the seas of all subsequent generations. After the interview reported in this paragraph and the Johannine parallel, there was never any wavering at all on the part of the apostles forever afterward. They passed up and down the provinces of the great empire shouting, "He is risen from the dead," sealing their testimony with blood, and preaching the gospel that turned the world upside down. Did it all actually happen? There is no explanation of the results of that night appearance unless indeed it did all actually take place. No skepticism can explain it otherwise.

In order to counteract their terror at being in the presence of what they supposed was a spirit, Jesus did such things as would enable them ever afterward to remember that his body was real, one that they observed, handled, and recognized, with the added detail that he even ate with them, not that he needed to do any such thing, but because they needed to see that he could!