Today’s readings: Acts 5, 27-32.40-41; Apocalypse 5, 11-14; John 21, 1-19.
Today’s gospel text from John proceeds with the same rhythm of the texts of the resurrection, with the disciples at first not recognising Jesus, and then recognising him. In this text, where Peter is the focus, one very significant thing is that it was the disciple Jesus loved who recognised Jesus, saying to Peter “It is the Lord”!
We ask why the first disciples were so hesitant, resistant and slow to believe. Their attitudes and difficulties are the same as ours today. It is a struggle to remain open to the truth of Jesus who rose from the dead. But, as is emphasised on this third Sunday of Easter, it is love alone that opens the eyes of the heart and the mind to recognise the risen Christ. This is a very significant shift.
When confronting Peter, Jesus did not ask him “Do you believe in me?” Instead he asked: “Do you love me?” Love is at the centre of the entire Jesus story and mystery. Only love can open the heart and dispel the doubts to make us acknowledge his living presence. Perhaps that is why it was the disciple Jesus loved who first recognised the Lord.
Religion is for lovers, writes John Caputo in his book On Religion. Religion is for passionate people, for people with a passion for something other than profits, who believe in something, who hope in something, who love something with a love that surpasses understanding. It is this passion that makes it possible for us today to connect with the risen Lord in the midst of so much that makes us hesitant and doubtful. The fact that the disciples returned to their old familiar ways made it difficult for them to identify Jesus on the shore.
The text from John is divided into two parts which at first sight seem separate but which are actually intimately linked. It starts with the miraculous catch of fish and ends with Peter’s investiture, narrated in a manner radically different from what we find in the other gospels. Again here it is love which is central, and this gives a totally different perspective to the meaning of the ministry of Peter, which we always translated as that of succeeding popes.
Jesus shows that Peter’s primacy was meant differently, when he indicates to him the kind of death by which Peter would give glory to God. Peter himself confirms this when, as we read from Acts, he shows how his love was uncompromising because “obedience to God comes before obedience to men”. The first reading from Acts accounts for the way Peter and the other apostles “left the presence of the Sanhedrin, glad to have had the honour of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name”.
There is no doubt that Peter was invested with authority. But the context in which Jesus enjoins Peter to “feed my lambs”, “look after my sheep”, and “feed my sheep”, reveals the type of authority that should characterise leadership in the Church. Unfortunately we have always understood this authority to be mainly a transference of power. That is how the Church developed as an organisation through the ages, considering itself a perfect society parallel to civil society. It suffices to note how more than a third of the Church’s Code of Canon Law is about norms, offences and punishments, and processes.
This was the one aspect that dominated the life of the Church for ages, and it is now with great difficulty that we can open up to a different approach. As Pope Francis writes in his The Joy of the Gospel: “It is my duty, as Bishop of Rome, to be open to suggestions which can help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelisation”.
Little did we take into serious consideration throughout all the developments that marked the exercise of power within the Church and of the Church towards the world at large that, as we read today from the Apocalypse, at the centre of it all there is “the lamb that was sacrificed worthy to be given power, riches, wisdom, strength, honour, glory and blessing”. The Book of the Apocalypse depicts a very surrealistic cosmic liturgy with the lamb sitting on a throne. It is to this that we are called to return to grasp the truth that its all about love.