Do You Love Me?

Third Sunday of Easter

John 21:1-19

April 8, 2016

Reading today’s Gospel in original Greek, we get to appreciate more the dialogue between Jesus and Peter. In English translation, both Jesus and Peter expressed themselves in the same word ‘love’, but in Greek, the word Jesus employed is ‘agapao’ while Peter’s is ‘phileo’. ‘Agapao’ or ‘agape’ refers to unconditional and radical love that every Christian should exemplify. This love is based on freewill and discipline, not just affections. This love empowers to love, to forgive and to have mercy even to our enemies. While ‘phileo’ or ‘philia’ is the reciprocal love of friendship. It is coming from both natural liking as well as firm decision. We make friends with whom we feel close, yet we exert also efforts to get close and understand them. As an old adage say, ‘friend in indeed is friends indeed.’ 

Jesus asked, “Peter, do you unconditionally and radically love me?” yet Peter answered, “Lord, you know that I love you as my friend.” Jesus demanded radical love of 'agape' for three times, and for three times, Peter could only give Jesus love of friendship or 'phileo'. This seems another Peter’s outright denial of Jesus. But, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI humbly defended his predecessor that at that very moment, ‘phileo’ was his very best.

The dialogue of love between Jesus and Peter is also our dialogue with the Lord. Jesus demands from us that radical and selfless love for Him. But, it is difficult. It is hard to give time in service in the Church, when we are also struggling with our daily life and financial status. A friend told me how he has desire to serve, yet he is the ‘breadwinner’ of the family and has to work 12 hours a day. It is also difficult to love God, when our lives are in mess. How can we love God, when our marriage is falling, when our children entered rehabilitation due to drug-addiction or in jail for their juvenile delinquency? How can we love when our job or business is falling apart? How can we love God if we are betrayed and hurt by persons we love so much? We stop loving and enter into our own self-confinement.

Yet, when Peter failed to meet Jesus’ hope, Jesus was not angry. He never said, ‘You are a failure. You are a mistake.’ Rather, He gave Peter a tremendous responsibility, ‘Tend and Feed my sheep.’ Jesus knows well it is difficult to love. He himself has to die the most brutal death just to prove His love for us. Yet, He does not see us as a failure despite our shortcomings and difficulties in loving. He who has given us the ability to love, knows exactly our potential to love. Indeed, Peter who was struggling to love Jesus, finally proved his love to Jesus as he tended His sheep to the last moment of his life. Peter was crucified upside down, because he refused to abandon Jesus’ sheep in Rome. 

When we fail to love God, He did not abandon us, and in fact, He gives us even more mission to love because Jesus is aware that only through this hardship, we may expand our ability to love. Love without trials and tribulations is shallow and weak kind of love. St. John reminded us that God is love (1 John 4:8). Thus, when we struggle to love through thick and thin of lives, we shall remember that it is not us who love, but God himself.

Br. Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP