“Peter, Do You Love Me?” | Third Sunday of Easter | Sunday Reflection

In these Easter days, God’s passionate love pursues us in the Glorious Christ. He has taken our humanity through His saving death and resurrection. In the gospel passages, the main drama of life is played out. Peter and the others are confronted with the truth of the resurrection. They are sought by the passionate love of God.

Relentlessly, God pursues us in love and approaches us in ways familiar and palatable to us, to draw us more powerfully to Himself. In the gospel appearances, the Risen One calls us by name; He interprets all that has happened; He feeds us; and He asks if we love Him.

In today’s gospel, Peter’s faith and love are put before us. At last Peter believes “It is the Lord.” He jumps into the sea to reach the Lord quickly. Peter spends a lot of time jumping into water: fishing, walking on water in faith, sinking in doubt, and being raised up again by Christ.

Peter also renews his love for Our Lord three times. The earlier call of Jesus to Peter (“follow me”) is renewed, and Peter’s denial is undone under the merciful gaze of Christ. His guilt and shame are healed. Now, Peter will lay down his life and not just talk about it. Now, Peter will go where he would rather not go. Like his Lord, he will go to the Cross. Surrendering himself entirely to Jesus in his life and in his death, Peter glorifies God fully.

The pattern of Peter’s discipleship is replicated in our Christian lives—from eagerness, to doubting and sinking, and then being rescued again and restored by Christ. Every Christian life asks for surrender and tends toward the Cross, through which God is glorified in us.

“Do you love me?” Jesus asks Peter three times in today’s gospel. It’s a question He poses to every successor of Peter. As we mourn Pope Francis, we pray that the Lord will raise up for us the pope He wants, one who will love Jesus passionately and draw the world to Divine Love.

Today’s gospel also reminds us of the final words of Pope Benedict XVI before he died: “Jesus, I love you.” So simple and so rooted in today’s gospel! There is a lesson here for us too. After the theological and spiritual wealth Benedict left behind, all that mattered in the end was love. All the Church does and teaches springs from Divine Love, seeking to evoke our free and willing: “Jesus, I love you.” Every martyr, every saint, every one of us is to live these words “Jesus, I love you.”

Most of us will not be the successor of Saint Peter! But to each of us, Jesus directs His healing gaze with the words: “Do you love me?” What counts is that at the end we can say with our lips and with our lives: “Jesus, I love you.” In this way, like Peter, we glorify God with our death and with our life—sometimes going where we would rather not go. This means choosing His will over our own. That’s where the difficulty lies, but only in this way is the Lord glorified in us.