There is something truly powerful recounted in the scene described in the first reading today. A group of simple, unlettered fishermen is brought before the highest Jewish authority of the time, the Sanhedrin, the same men who had sent Jesus to the cross a few weeks earlier. These fishermen, who had fled during the fateful night of Good Friday, who had then barricaded themselves in a room with the doors and windows closed and locked in fear of these same men, now looked into their eyes and courageously held their gaze. At the front of this group, stood the one who had denied his Master three times and who swore he had never met him.
Undoubtedly, being summoned before the Sanhedrin must have been an intimidating experience: those elders with long beards and phylacteries imposed a true reverential fear on the humblest of their people. However, the disciples of the Crucified One were no longer the same frightened and doubting men they had known before. Something had changed in them. There was a light, an aura that now gave strength to their words. They were now the ones emanating an authority that could not be contradicted. Their crucified Lord was alive. He who had died had now risen, and they could not silence the great news of which they had been made witnesses. The Holy Spirit had saturated their souls, and had transformed their cowardice into courage, their weakness into strength, their hesitations into certainties, their indecision into boldness (parrhesia).
Even two thousand years later when I read or hear this passage, I feel proud to belong, unworthily, to the same group of disciples. That fisherman from Galilee represents the man I would like to become. His Church, which is the Church of Jesus Christ, is also mine, and his mission is also ours.
Dear brothers and sisters, we must shake off our fear and proclaim the Gospel and the Resurrection. This is not about being good people and coming to church. Christ said: "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and would that it were already burning!" (Lk 12:49) We must come to love Christ to the point that, like the disciples, we too feel joy when we suffer dishonor for the sake of our Master. To do otherwise is to try to save our own lives, and in doing so, we will lose them forever.
Let us not be discouraged if we feel weak though. Let us find consolation in today's Gospel. The same disciple whom we see today standing up for Christ in the first reading is the one who three times fell flat on his face with his betrayals of Jesus. The Lord takes us where we are and lifts us up, if we let him do so, to an ever more perfect love.
Pope Benedict XVI showed this with great beauty in commenting on this Sunday's Gospel passage. In Greek there are two verbs that designate the action of loving: phileo, which expresses the love of friendship, tender and devoted; and agapáo, which means to love without reserve, with a complete and unconditional gift to the beloved. The evangelist John, when he refers to the episode of the appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter on the shores of Lake Tiberias, uses both in a very significant and revealing way.
We can imagine this episode as the meeting of two dear friends aware of the wound that has opened up in their relationship, but sincerely willing to heal it, willing to receive and give forgiveness so that this wound does not overshadow the future of their friendship. Peter knows that when his friend needed him most, he betrayed him out of cowardice or mere survival instinct, denying him three times after promising him absolute loyalty. Jesus, for his part, knows that this betrayal was a consequence of his friend's weakness, a consequence of human nature itself; and he also knows that his friend is ashamed and saddened by his lack of courage.
Then Jesus, ready to forget Peter’s weakness, asks him point-blank: "Do you love me?" The Evangelist writes agapâs-me; that is: "Do you love me with a complete and unconditional love?“ It is as if Jesus demands from Peter a love superior to the love he has professed before, a love that excludes weaknesses and proclaims an enthusiastic, staunch, perhaps even superhuman, adherence. Nothing would have been easier for Peter than to respond agapô-se "I love you unconditionally." thus satisfying the demand for absolute love that Jesus makes of him; but, aware of his limitations, aware that he has betrayed him before and that in the future he might do so again - although, of course, nothing could be further from his purpose - Peter responds with a modest and terse humility: Kyrie, filô-se; that is: "Lord, I love you in the human way, with my limitations."
We can imagine that Peter's response for a second would disappoint Jesus: he has offered his friend his sincere forgiveness, and even something more than his forgiveness, in exchange for never failing him again; but his friend does not want to disappoint Jesus with inflated hopes or empty promises, he does not want Jesus to attribute superhuman virtues to him. Then the Lord insists and again uses the verb agapao: "Do you love me unconditionally? Do you love me more than these?", referring to the disciples standing at Peter's side by the lake. This second question of Jesus must have incorporated an authoritative, even exasperated nuance, something like: "Hey, I'm asking you if you love me to death, don't give me half-measures." Peter undoubtedly picked up this pressing tone of Jesus, and something must have trembled within him, perhaps the fear of disappointing his friend; and it does not seem improbable that his response had a tone of hesitation, faint, hurt, fearful of receiving a reprimand. But he still used again the verb phileo, meaning to say: "Lord, I would love to love you as you are asking of me, but my love is poor and defective. I love you with all my frailties on my shoulders."
Then Jesus returns to question him for the third time, just as three times his friend had denied him on that bitter night. But, to Peter's surprise, Jesus now uses the same verb to which Peter had clung before: Fileis-me? It is a very touching moment, because Jesus realizes that he cannot demand from his friend something that is not in his fragile human nature. Putting aside that superhuman demand, he adapts himself, he molds himself to Peter's weakness, to the fragile human condition, because he understands that in Peter’s blundering love that stumbles and falls, and yet gets up again ready to begin anew without hesitation, there can be an impetus, a joy superior even to that of a love that believes itself inured against all stumbles. In other words, the Lord lowers himself so that he can embrace Peter and raise him up, one day, to a greater love, like the one we see in the first reading.
Then Peter, gratified by the forgiveness of his friend who accepts him as he is, who embraces him even when he stumbles and falls, affirms with relief, with decision, with joy: "You know that I love you" (philo-se). And they were friends forever. Peter bore witness to Christ bravely as we’ve seen in the first reading and, at the end of his time on earth, like his friend and Master, laid down his life for him just as Jesus had given his for Peter before.
May we too place ourselves in the hands of Jesus. May we let him lift us up. May we seek daily in quiet conversation with him in order to be later, in our families and in our communities, courageous and devoted witnesses of his Resurrection in today's world.
