Daily Mass Gospel Reflection

Friends, today’s Gospel tells of the great engagement between the risen Jesus and Peter.
Peter knows his sin—he betrayed Jesus three times.
But Jesus brings him through the process of repentance
and gives him the key to transformation.
Three times Peter denied the Lord,
and so three times Jesus asks him to reaffirm his faith:
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Notice that Christianity is not a set of ideas or convictions or principles.
It is a relationship with a person.
Do you love Jesus? Has he become your friend?

When Simon says yes, Jesus tests him:
“Feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.”
The test of love is action.
Are we willing to do what Jesus did?
Are we willing to go on mission on his behalf?

Then we hear that wonderful closing section:
“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.”
The ultimate test of discipleship is our willingness to abandon our egos
and be carried by a power greater than ourselves.

+++After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples
and eaten breakfast with them,
he said to Simon Peter,
"Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
Simon Peter answered him,
"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."
He then said to Simon Peter a second time,
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
Simon Peter answered him,
"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
He said to him, "Tend my sheep."
He said to him the third time,
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time,
"Do you love me?" and he said to him,
"Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.
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."
He said this signifying by what kind of death
he would glorify God.
And when he had said this, he said to him,
"Follow me."+++

Notice that Christianity is not a set of ideas or convictions or principles. It is a relationship with a person.

It is both. With the ideas and without the relationship, your faith is brittle; we see this in the perpetual Pharisaism that used to inhabit most traditional churches, before Marxism took over. But without the ideas and with the relationship, your faith is foolish; we see this in the perpetual foolishness of contemporary churches.

Notice that Christianity is not a set of ideas or convictions or principles.
It is a relationship with a person.
Do you love Jesus?

It is both. With the ideas and without the relationship, your faith is brittle;
we see this in the perpetual Pharisaism that used to inhabit most traditional churches, before Marxism took over.

I understand your sentiment completely,
but I think it misses the mark in understanding here.
The writer here is not tossing aside ideas, convictions and principles, after all,
his life is a product of all that.
What the Bishop is saying is that none of that can equal,
or is on the same level as, the central definitiveness of Christianity-
which is the unique relationship between Christ and His Followers.
No other Religion or theological system- supported by their convictions and principles as well- has a salvific desire of a Divine Relationship as Christians are supposed to with Christ.

And today’s Gospel reading sums up that simplistic nature of Christianity nicely as The Resurrected Christ asks simply of Peter?
DO YOU LOVE ME?
That’s it.
Nothing else Matters.
That's the core, the entire being.
Nothing else is required to enter into the Divine Relationship.
And so everything else - doctrines- Sacraments- ideas, convictions and principles
all that follows from that loving, accepted relationship with Christ that HE asks of us.
It's wrapped up nicely in today's Gospel from John- a fundamental simplistic request-
where Christ simply says…

“FOLLOW ME”

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