Third Sunday of
Easter (C)
(Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19)
The Apostle Peter -- helped by John -- will hopefully stimulate us
this day to better understand, love, and respond to Our Lord, as His true
disciples in Mother Church and before the world.
Peter was a strong and undeniably impulsive character as we have
just heard:
When
Simon Peter heard (from John) that it was the Lord, he tucked in his garment,
for he was lightly clad, and jumped into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat.
Jesus
said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish you just caught,’ so Simon Peter went
over and dragged the net ashore full of 153 large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was
not torn.
However, it is Jesus’ three-fold questioning of Peter that is the
most striking and significant feature of the Gospel reading for us today:
Simon, son of John, do you
love Me? Do you love Me? Do you love Me?
That three-fold insistence of Jesus is understood by many as His
way of giving Peter the opportunity to revoke what had recently been his hasty,
fear-driven, three-fold denial of Jesus.
Such a possibility cannot be gainsaid and its divine beauty strongly
recommends it. And yet, since nothing
is simple about Peter, it may also be the case that here Jesus, witnessing to
His Father’s great mercy, is also preparing the coping stone for His future
Church in line with diverse aspects of Peter’s own make-up. For example, let us consider the very first
question of Jesus: Simon,
son of John, do you love Me more than these?
Peter was both head-strong and self-assertive; and yet, surely,
our blessed Lord was not inviting him there to assert that his own love of
Jesus was greater than that of the other apostles present? Peter did not and could not know the inner
dispositions of his fellow-apostles to any degree that might allow him to make
such an assertion; and although he was self-confident, he cannot be said to
have shown himself arrogant enough for such behaviour. It would seem, therefore, that Jesus was
inviting and encouraging Peter to declare, in all truth and humility, that he
loved Jesus far more than he loved any, or all, of the other apostles.
And why might Jesus have wanted such a declaration from
Peter? Well, as I have already said,
Peter was a strong and, should we say, ‘multi-layered’ character: he was a
prominent local business-man and being a natural leader and dominant
personality, he might also have been somewhat ‘prone to shoot off his mouth’,
to use modern jargon; but, dangerous though such attributes might easily be, he
was not – apparently -- prone to making notable business mistakes or personal
gaffs thereby, which would explain why his fellow business-associates and
future co-apostles unquestioningly accepted him as their spokesman and, indeed,
frequently showed themselves as willing, and even eager, to follow his personal
initiatives. Now that could, of itself, have insinuated into Peter’s psyche a
certain vanity, and with it an accompanying reluctance to knowingly do or say
anything that might put a strain on such a relationship of accepted dominance
with regard to his fellow apostles, and that, I say, could possibly have been part
of the motivation behind Jesus’ question, do
you love Me more than (you love) these? There
are, throughout the Gospel accounts, several instances of a particularly close
personal relationship between Peter and John, and it is quite striking that,
immediately after Peter’s protestation of supreme love in today’s Gospel:
Lord, You know everything,
You know that I love You,
Jesus thought it necessary to -- deliberately and quite pointedly
-- make absolutely clear to Peter the implications of such words, by demanding
their prompt and full observance; for we are told (cf. John 21: 19-22) that:
After
signifying by what kind of death Peter would glorify God, Jesus
said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ Peter turned
and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; ... (and) he said to
Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus
said, ’What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow Me.’
There are, however, other scholars who see in Jesus’ three-fold
questioning of Peter a then widely-recognized social procedure for conferring
and confirming before witnesses, a ‘legal’ right -- one fully approved and
legally binding -- on someone:
Feed My lambs; tend My
sheep; feed My sheep.
Most probably, therefore, we have a remarkable instance of Jesus’
great and most compassionate wisdom: He wipes out the memory – in Peter’s own
mind and in the minds of the other apostles – of Peter’s moment of weakness and
shame while at the same time, quite dramatically and most emphatically,
establishing him as the uncontestable head of His nascent Church in accordance
with His Father’s will.
There are also, in our Gospel, revealing words of Jesus about
Peter’s future crucifixion:
Amen,
amen, I say to you, when you were younger you used to dress yourself and go
where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and
someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
Jesus is there telling Peter, with remarkable openness and
sympathetic appreciation, the truth – knowable only to Jesus at that moment --
concerning Peter’s facing of the prospect of death after years of labour and
suffering for Jesus and the Church. Very
many modern Catholics and Christians find it difficult to appreciate such words
of Jesus, since they are, themselves, not sufficiently humble in their own
self-estimation or simple in their relationship before and with God. As moderns they are complicated by far too
much self-love, and fear of what other people might think; and, augmenting such
natural tendencies and frailties, they
may also have yielded far too easily and extensively to the requirements of
political correctness ... which all inevitably leads to a frequently observable
and widespread tendency to pretence
in matters of religious devotion. Few
would be humbly willing to acknowledge in themselves or could patiently accept
for themselves similar true words of Jesus about their own not wanting to go to death for Him.
At this juncture, however, we should recognize that there is no
question of Jesus implying that Peter would refuse to face up to his future crucifixion, only that Peter would
not want to go; and, in that regard,
we should recall that John tells us that:
Jesus
said this signifying by what kind of death he (Peter) would – in fact -- glorify God.
Now, human pretence -- no matter how pious it may seem or present
itself – never glorifies God or truly recognizes Jesus. Peter, as foreshadowed by Jesus, had -- in
the intervening years of struggle and suffering for and in the service of the
Church, and after countless hours of soul-opening prayer before God -- become
both humble and patient to a degree that most find it difficult to imagine
nowadays. He would in no way pretend to himself or to others that he
wanted to go where his captors were leading him, and in that he was
sublimely close to Jesus Whom he had personally – though with little
comprehension -- witnessed praying to His heavenly Father and struggling with
His human nature in the Garden of Gethsemane.
How much, indeed, did He now, at this climax of his discipleship, admire
Jesus and glorify God! For only Jesus wanted, only Jesus could have wanted to walk with such love – so
wholeheartedly and eagerly – to His crucifixion!
Oh! What wondrous love Jesus had conceived for those coming
sufferings of His crucifixion after His agony of blood-sweating-prayer in the
Garden of Gethsemane!! There He had
fought in prayer to, and before, His most beloved Father; and when His Father – after such urgent and Personal prayers --
still left the task on His shoulders, He, Jesus, knew without any doubt, that
He would find His Father in those
very sufferings. And that is why, when carrying His cross,
He always -- after each individual fall on the way – endeavoured to get up immediately, totally oblivious
to everything but His desire to love and glorify His Father in every detail of
what was being asked of Him by His most loving and lovable Father, though being
wickedly and cruelly demanded of Him by those who so deeply hated Him.
Peter was a most wonderful disciple of Jesus and he had come to
find no difficulty in acknowledging, admitting, his own nothingness: of himself
he did not want to go on that journey to his crucifixion because he did not, of
himself, love like Jesus the most beloved Son alone could love; but
he most fully trusted in Jesus his Brother and Saviour that He could and would
draw him after Himself, that He could and would help him, Peter, humbly follow
where He, Jesus his Lord, alone could lead.
For only one fully aware of, and appreciative of, his own nothingness
could then totally commit himself into God’s care:
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Father, into Your hands I commend My
spirit.
It is finished!
Dear People of God, let us most seriously pray for the simplicity
of heart to admire Peter’ example, and, above all, for the Gift of the God’s
Holy Spirit; that, of His great goodness and most subtle grace, we may embrace
Jesus’ teaching and follow ever more closely His most precious example by
offering truly humble praise and self-less glory, honour, and power, to God,
the Almighty and all-loving Father in heaven.
