Third Sunday of Easter Year C 2016

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.   

Second Sunday of Eastertide year C 2016

2^nd. Sunday Eastertide (C),

Acts 5:12-16; Revelation 1:9-13, 17-19; John 20:19-31)

The visceral attraction of Catholic faith and worship which we acknowledge as the mysterious power of divine holiness was quite perceptible when the early Church gathered together for prayer and celebration.  In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we were told that, although the first Christians used to meet openly in the Temple at Jerusalem along with thousands of other fellow Jews gathering for the Passover celebrations, and despite the fact that ‘many signs and wonders were done among the people at the hands of the apostles’, nevertheless:

None of the others dared to join them, but the people esteemed them. 

This reluctance of many to ‘be seen with’ the Christian company was mainly, no doubt, due to the fact that, as St. John (9:22) tells us:

The Jews had agreed already that if anyone acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, he would be expelled from the synagogue;

and we, of course, understand such fears easily enough today when many tremble before the censures of mere political correctness. 

Nevertheless, that most mysterious power of holiness would not allow certain others to remain as distant onlookers, for we are told in the next verse that:

Yet more than ever, believers in the Lord -- great numbers of men and women -- were added to them.

So, Christian worship was not for the casual or curious: it was for believers who found that the worship of the early Church corresponded with and confirmed their deepest human aspirations, and nurtured a God-given hope for the future in Jesus Christ; nor was it for drifters and dabblers, but for the committed who realized that faith in Jesus could overcome the greatest fear of all, that of death itself:

I am the first and the last, the One who lives.  Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. (Revelation 1:17-18)

That distinctive character of early Christianity is made abundantly clear at the very end of St. John’s Gospel where we are told:

Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

Now, no one liturgy can adequately express the full significance of Holy Mass, and so, whatever liturgy Mother Church might adopt, it would not be without its weaker aspects.  The atmosphere of our old Mass, for example, although clearly divine, could, and did for some, seem humanly distant and cold: for holiness over-emphasized can become humanly alienating.   Our modern, post Vatican II liturgy, on the other hand, although more clearly inviting and friendly as a family celebration, can -- and in some cases does -- easily become over-human with little sense of divine presence.  Too much emphasis on family easily degenerates into familiarity.

Therefore it is fitting that we who celebrate the Eucharist according to the modern, family, liturgy, take careful notice of the reverence which is so prominent a feature of today’s readings:

When I saw One like the Son of Man, I fell at His feet as though dead. He touched me with His right hand and said, "Do not be afraid; I have the keys to death and the netherworld”.

Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you!" Then He said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see My hands, and reach your hand and put it into My side; do not be unbelieving, but believe."  Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Thomas, have you come to believe because you have seen Me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

We must never forget that we meet Jesus most nearly, most clearly, most surely, at holy Mass.  You will remember how the two disciples on the way to Emmaus met a most impressive and sympathetic stranger who walked and talked with them on the way; and although this man was able to explain all the scriptures concerning Jesus in such a way that their hearts burned within them; nevertheless, they did not recognize Him as Jesus until the moment when, as St. Luke tells us (24:30-31):

While He was at the table with them, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.

It is the same for us today: our key to understanding life, our key to appreciating the Scriptures, is given us through our personal appreciation of, encounter with, and response to, Jesus at Holy Mass; it is here that we are closest to Him, because it is at Mass that He comes closest to us, bestowing His Spirit of wisdom and understanding upon all who look for Him in sincerity of faith and love.

Although still one of us, Jesus is now in glory, and as the first Christians came to recognize and most firmly believe, He holds the keys of death and the netherworld.  He is the One rightly addressed as “My Lord and my God”, the only One able to demand faith without sight.  And indeed, if we look a little closer we can see the divine majesty of Jesus even more clearly, because in our second reading we heard of the Risen Lord saying:

"Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.”

Now, those words “I am the First and the Last” were spoken of God Himself by the prophet Isaiah on three occasions, of which here is one:

Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel: 'I am the First and I am the Last; there is no God but Me. (Isaiah 44:6)

And so, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us both gratefully tell out our joy and renew our reverence during this holy Mass in which we offer both the sacrifice of our crucified Saviour and celebrate the presence of the Risen Lord, before most humbly opening our hearts to welcome Him and His most Holy Spirit into the ‘nitty, gritty’ of our lives and being through reception of the Eucharist.  For, recalling how much Jesus suffered for us, we rejoice in and give thanks for the love that drove Him to such lengths; and we likewise draw deep confidence from our awareness of the fact that He is indeed our Brother, thanks to the flesh and blood He glorifies and yet deigns to share with us.  Above all such joy and confidence, however, when we go on yet further to consider the fact that He wills to eventually make us, in Himself, true children of the Father and sharers in His own eternal glory and blessedness before the Father -- only then, can we begin to realize how deep should be our reverence for Him Who, though being Himself the only-begotten and eternally-beloved Son of the Father, has become for us the Conqueror of sin and death, and Lord of Life, able and willing to offer us the possibility of such a transcendent destiny through the Gift of His most Holy Spirit that we might both embrace and fulfil it.

Though called, endowed, and destined thus to become true children and heirs in the Father’s heavenly kingdom, so long as we live on this earth we walk by faith, as St. Paul, the ‘Doctor of the Gentiles’ said:

In the gospel, the righteousness from God is revealed, from faith to faith, as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."  (Romans 1:17)

And it was for that reason that Paul told his converts in Philippi (2:12):

My dear friends, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. 

And again in his first letter to his converts in Corinth (15:53-57):

This corruptible (body) must put on incorruption, and this mortal (body) must put on immortality … when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory”.

Only when that final victory is secured will our rejoicing be such as to totally express and transfigure us; and then indeed, confirmed as children and heirs, we will sing with sublime and totally reverential love and awe:

Thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Until that moment of eschatological fulfilment, People of God, this our Easter Eucharist offers us the most authentic foretaste of the heavenly and eternal celebration of God and His Christ; and therefore it is here at Mass that we can and should most fittingly give whole-hearted expression to our present joy and reverential gratitude as disciples of Him Who is: 

The first and the last, the One Who lives: once dead but now alive forever and ever, holding the keys to death and the netherworld.

(Adapted 2016; not given anywhere in this form.)