1 May 2022
Third Sunday of Easter
“…do you love me?”
There on the seashore where first He met Peter, Jesus undoes the knots of His friend’s three-fold denial, asking three times if Peter loves Him. But before this conversation takes place, Jesus has to “catch” Peter again. Notice Peter says to his friends “I am going fishing”: in other words, he is taking up his old way of life, not as a way of forfeiting his life as an apostle, but as a distraction, as a means of coping with all that has taken place: he retreats to what is familiar. Peter becomes a fisherman again, enters back into a realm where he is the master, where all is simple and understood. Yet when a stranger appears on the shore and asks if anything has been caught, they answer, “No.” Why?
Because Peter, because all of them, have been called to be fishers of men. So the Lord reminds them who is the Master, and by obeying His command to cast their nets over the right side, they indeed make a catch. They remember who they are; they remember Jesus, and they recognize Him. Peter is so torn out of his malaise that he leaps into the water and swims to shore; by the end of his meal with Jesus he is facing the future. It is a future of foretold suffering, and yet there is a certainty and comfort in the Lord’s final command to Peter: “Follow me.”
Now Jesus turns to us, asking us three times, “Do you love me?” How do we respond?