Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Francis Daniel Beckham, OHC
The Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles, June 29, 2023
What does it mean to love? To be loved? What does it feel like? How do we behave towards the ones we love? And what do we do to take care of them? Naturally, our answers will depend on exactly whom we love, what kind of love we’re feeling toward them – romantic, friendship, familial – as well as our own needs, past experiences, expectations, and circumstances.
When we’re teenagers or young adults, for instance, experiencing the reciprocated affections of a crush for the first time, we’re likely to feel infatuation and excitement, accompanied by a grand delusion of devotion: “This is the one!” we tell ourselves. “This is the real thing! If we were ever to break up (which we definitely won’t) I’d never find anyone else to love ever again!” We aren’t usually disingenuous our first time out the gate; it’s just all new and wonderful to us, and we haven’t yet got the benefit of experience to help us have a slightly more measured perspective on the matter.
Love hits much differently when, later down the road, a first-time parent holds their newborn in their arms and realizes what absolute, unshakable, unconditional love and devotion really feels like. Or when, in our middle or later years we suddenly realize just how long a spouse, partner, sibling, cousin, or friend has stuck by us – someone with whom we’ve shared countless formative experiences including both the highs and lows of life, resulting in deep, abiding friendship.
When we’re blessed with a soulmate who just ‘gets’ us, we discover a different way of feeling love for someone – a way marked by sincere gratitude for having a person in our life who makes us feel seen, heard, understood, and appreciated for who we are, warts and all. We’re much more careful to guard and nurture these kinds of relationships because of how much they genuinely mean to us. And the older we get, the more we learn to treasure them.
In reflecting on our Gospel reading, I was struck at the tenderness of the conversation between Jesus and Peter, and just how deep a friendship it reveals. I found myself returning again and again to Jesus’ opening question to Peter: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” It’s a remarkable thing to ask someone. “Do you love me? And do you love me more than anyone else does?” For many of us, I think this would be a terrifying question to ask or be asked. What if we don’t receive – or can’t give – the hoped-for answer?
Yet Jesus asks Peter this question two more times. He asks Peter if he loves him not because he needs to know, or because he doubts the sincerity of his answer – Jesus knows Peter better than anyone, and he’s fully aware that Peter loves him. Rather, Jesus asks because Peter needs to be assured of his love for Jesus. After all, in John’s Gospel, it’s only been a little while since Peter let his friend down in a pretty big way – and at a very crucial moment – by denying that he even knew Jesus, his friend. And he didn’t deny Jesus only once, but three times in a single night. This was not a friend-of-the-year moment, and we know how badly Peter feels about his behavior. In Matthew’s account of the Passion, we learn that, following his third denial, “[Peter] went out and began to weep bitterly.”
But Jesus isn’t trying to rub salt in the wound. Quite the opposite: he’s letting Peter know that their friendship is still intact, that the two of them are still okay. Jesus accepts that in any relationship there are bound to be moments of selfishness and hurt feelings. Knowing Peter as well as he does, he even tried telling him this was going to happen. “I know how you are, Peter,” we can hear Jesus saying, “and when the pressure’s on later, you’re going to panic and say something hurtful, even though I know you aren’t really going to mean it.”
In this intensely intimate moment between friends, where Jesus and Peter finally have an opportunity to talk alone for the first time since Maundy Thursday, the wounds of the past begin to be healed. In contrast to the three denials, Jesus gives Peter the chance to state his love for him three times, even though Peter, true to form, initially fails to recognize this as an act of healing and is, instead, quite hurt. This is, for me, the most difficult part of the passage. It’s the part that reminds me that being loved hurts as much as it heals – and that being loved can be one of the most difficult things in the world, especially when I feel it coming from someone I don’t believe I deserve to receive it from.
During my lectio with this passage, I imagined Jesus staring directly into Peter’s eyes, questioning him in a steady, but gentle, voice, almost as if saying, “Peter, I know you love me. Please forgive yourself and move past this with me by taking care of those entrusted to me by the One Who Sent Me. I need you to do this now, and I know you will do it well, because you know what it’s like to feel. Follow me.”
In this moment Jesus extends to Peter the surest sign of love there is: Mercy. It’s the same loving mercy Jesus wills for each of us, whether we’re always able to believe it or not. There’s never an “I told you so” or “How could you have done what you did” or “You’re going to have to prove you’re sorry before I’ll ever be able to trust you again.” No, only mercy. Jesus says to Peter and to each of us, “I know you’re not perfect, and I love you every bit as much as I always have. Every. Single. One. Of. You.”
And so, after cooking a meal for Peter and the others (another sure sign of love almost any of us can relate to) and sharing a heart-to-heart with him, Jesus entrusts the well-being of the nascent Church to Peter with a clear example of just how he expects him – and us – to go about “tending his sheep.” Love them, nurture them, forgive them, and be merciful.
Jesus, being the true friend he was to Peter, did not mince words about how difficult this was going to be, or about the fate he would eventually meet. The same would prove to be true for Paul, who himself would later be called by Jesus and accepted by the apostles through a particularly extraordinary show of mercy, and who would then join Peter in feeding and tending the flock, even at the eventual cost of his own life.
Both apostles were invited – as all of us are – to give up control of their own lives and destinies out of love for Christ and those beloved of Christ – that is, everyone. This was no summer fling; this was the deepest, truest kind of love the likes of which we can only catch glimpses of this side of Paradise, but which nevertheless stirs each of our hearts to care for others – those we know, and those we don’t – preparing and sharing a meal where there is hunger, extending mercy where there is shame and despair, and welcoming all we encounter along the path of following in the Way.
I pray that each of us, following in the example of Peter and Paul, will embrace Jesus’ invitation to love, and feel ourselves loved by, God, forgiving ourselves and one another, feeding and tending this big, wounded, wonderful flock – and always with gentleness and mercy.
May peace and all that is good be with each of us and those we love today and always. Amen.
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