In today’s Gospel (John 21:1-19) you might expect that Jesus would ask Simon Peter to say sorry. But no, he doesn’t. You can hear and see me give this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEqbXDaWQDw
Think about it for a moment. Here he is, the man who promised that he would stand by Jesus and even die with him; and yet who denied him again and again; but then when he meets the risen Jesus, there is no looking back, no place to say sorry. There’s not even the question of asking him, like a good counsellor, why he went wrong. No! These are the normal things we humans expect of one another when we go wrong, so why doesn’t Jesus ask this of Simon Peter?
Surely the answer is that although God does expect us to say sorry to one another, to make up in some way for our past failings, what God is much more interested in is not our past but our future. So Jesus doesn’t say “Simon, son of John, are your sorry?” but “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Think back for a moment to a few Sundays before Easter when we heard the story of the woman taken in adultery. Here too, Jesus wasn’t interested in condemning her, and we heard then that great passage from Isaiah (43:16-21) where God proclaims “No need to recall the past… see I am doing a new deed.” And that is surely what the risen Christ is saying to Simon Peter? This is a new beginning. I am transformed and so are you! Because the important thing that Jesus asks of each one of us now is not “Are you sorry?” or “Are you going to be a better person”. But simply “Do you love me?”
Two things flow from this. The first is about Peter and his future, and the second is about us. Now we know what Peter’s reply is, because he even gets a bit upset that Jesus asks him the question three times, and so finally after the third time he says “Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.” Jesus knows everything, so he knows that in the future Peter, our St Peter, like us, will still make mistakes, will still not be perfect. There are two examples of this that we know of. The first is in St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (2:11-16) where Paul says he had to oppose Peter publicly when Peter, under pressure, reverted to Jewish ways of behaving that excluded non-Jews. And the second is the wonderful story that’s not in the Bible, when Peter ran away again, this time from Rome, to escape persecution, and how he then met Jesus, and Jesus simply said to him, “Where are you going? It was then that Peter realised where his future lay, and turned back to Rome. This time he did not deny Jesus, he knew only that he had promised to love him, and so went back to die like Jesus did.
So now what does this story say to us? Well first it reminds us that what God wants from us, is not some slavish obedience to a set of rules and regulations, not some desperate striving to be good and holy. No, all that God wants from us is our love. Jesus says to us every day “Do you love me?” That’s the question we have to answer. I’m always angry when I’m told of priests who on hearing someone’s confession have given them a good telling off. That’s not what the Confessional is for. It is a place where we meet Jesus, and the priest’s job is to convey to each of us how much God loves us. He might also suggest ways in which the person might deal with a particular failing, but always with God’s love at the heart of all he says.
We need to remember that all we do as Christians we do out of love. Why do we try to get to Mass every Sunday? Not because we are told to, but because we love Jesus and want to meet him, to receive his offering of himself to us, and to offer ourselves back to him. Why do we try to send some time in prayer regularly, either saying some prayers or spending some time in meditation? Not because we are told to, but because we love Jesus. We know that he has promised always to be with us, for he said “Lo, I am with you always to the end of the world,” (Matt 28:20) but although he is always with us, we are not always with him. We need time to listen to him, to be with him more completely.
And given this is the beginning of May, we might also ask why do we honour Our Lady, why do we say the Rosary? The answer is the same. Because we love Jesus, and to know and love his mother is to know and love him better too. I think we sometimes forget when we say the Hail Mary, that some of the words within this well-known prayer are words that refer to Jesus. We say “The Lord is with thee.” And one crucial phrase in the prayer is actually addressed to Jesus “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” Sometimes good devout people say to me “I say the Rosary every day Father,” and in reply I usually say how glad I am that they do this. But sometimes I want to ask them why! I hope their answer would be “Because I love Jesus.”
As some of you know, the Rosary is divided into sections of ten beads, for ten Hail Mary’s plus an “Our Father” before, and a “Glory be to the Father” after. It’s what we call a Decade of the Rosary. But saying the Rosary is not just a matter of rattling off these prayers, for as we say each Decade, we are meant to think about something Jesus in his love has done for us, and thus build up in our hearts and minds how much we love him. So we think for example of his birth, his death, his resurrection, his raising Our Lady into his glory and, so on. So, as we honour Our Lady in her special month, what pleases her most is that we are aiming to love her son as much as she does.
The story of Peter, as with the story of Mary, also reminds us that if we love God, if we follow Jesus, then we may find ourselves doing things that will surprise us, or even find ourselves going to places “Where we would rather not go.” Peter and Mary had no idea where their future lay when God first called them. If you had told me 60 odd years ago that I would end up as a Catholic priest, I would have laughed at you. Even though I thought I loved Jesus, I had all sorts of plans. Perhaps you have heard that when someone says “I have plans”, God laughs.
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