Poor Peter. What a sorry excuse for a disciple. He was not only a liar, denying Jesus three times, he was also a coward, running away when Jesus needed him most. No wonder when he heard the news Jesus had risen from the dead, his heart sank. He knew he was not worthy to be the prince of apostles, much less the first pope. So after the joy of that first Easter faded, he feared there was no place for him in the kingdom of God. He went back to the only thing he really knew how to do. He went fishing.
The trouble is, he wasn’t even good at that any more. He and his companions caught nothing. When Jesus again appeared to them, poor Peter was so confused he actually put his clothes on and then jumped into the water. That man was a mess.
Now Peter’s healing begins. He had denied knowing the Lord three times, so three times Jesus asks him to confess his love. Each time, Jesus tells him “Feed my sheep.” Jesus calls him by his original name: Simon, son of John. This is significant. Perhaps Jesus concedes Peter has forfeited the right to be called the “Rock,” since clearly his faith had been so shaky it would have made a poor foundation upon which to build a church.
Instead, Jesus wants him to feed the sheep with what Peter had personally experienced following his unspeakable sin: unconditional forgiveness. This wasn’t something he read about in a book. He could now preach to the world about forgiveness because he, the least worthy to be an apostle, had received forgiveness. In many ways, Peter’s sin was worse than Judas’s. If Judas isn’t a saint it’s not because he betrayed our Lord but because he refused the Lord’s forgiveness and, instead, committed suicide. Peter, for his part, when he realized what he had done, broke down in tears. Tears of repentance.
It is the forgiveness Peter received that feeds us here today. If he can be forgiven, than so can we. Our sins pale by comparison.
These days, as you know, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, the successor of St. Peter, must also be feeling unworthy. He probably wishes he too can just forget about the whole mess and go fishing. No doubt his reputation and even his authority have been seriously damaged by recent revelations. Last week he called for repentance in the Church. This can only be accomplished in a spirit of humility. It does no good to blame the press, or blame this group or that group for problems you yourself created.
But if the Holy Father, whose past mistakes have been so painfully exposed, puts on the clothing of humility and jumps into the waters of sincere repentance, I for one am more than ready to join him. Yes, priests have committed unspeakable sins in the past; yes bishops, out of misplaced loyalty and shocking incompetence, have brought scandal and confusion to the People of God. But today the Risen Lord stands before each of them as he stood before Peter and asks, “Do you love me more than these? If so, then feed my sheep—from your humility, not from your arrogance; from your honesty, not from your belligerence; from your repentance, not from your pride.”
Do this and the world, which seems to take delight in the Church’s disgrace, will stand in awe at the Church’s inevitable resurrection.
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