Today's readings: Acts 5, 27-32.40-41; Apocalypse 5, 11-14; John 21, 1-19.
To a community which was fragmented and even traumatised after his death on the cross, Jesus wanted to give assurance, solidity, and serenity. Out of the ruins of his first community, Jesus built something whole. But that same wholeness is now again in fragments. The Gospel remarks that "in spite of there being so many fish, the net was not torn". But throughout the 2,000 years of its history, the net, here representing the Church, has often been torn apart.
The miraculous catch of fish, which in the Synoptic Gospels is given before the crucifixion, comes after Christ's resurrection in the Gospel of John. And this is no coincidence, given that Peter is the protagonist here. Peter whom Jesus had chosen to be a fisher of men, is now made also a shepherd. His call to be a shepherd comes after a night in which the disciples had cast their nets without success.
This Gospel text is one of the most beautiful we have, heavily loaded with emotion but also with deep significance. The early Church must have had a reason for inserting this heart-to-heart dialogue between Jesus and Peter in the presence of others.
Throughout the rest of the Gospel, Peter is always proactive, at times even presumptuous and head in air, sounding too sure of himself. Here we have a different Peter. Here Peter is reactive, emotional, disarmed by the triple insistence on the part of Jesus with the question: "Do you love me?" Peter almost had the feeling of being cornered. But at the same time it was not an interrogation, even if it came after his triple denial.
The role of Peter, not only among the Twelve but in the life of the Church, has always provoked debate and controversy. Indeed, it was and is still cause for division. Today it is more than ever evident that a renewed focus on leadership is absolutely essential to the renewal and growth of the Church. What kind of leadership should characterise the Church in these times?
The Church has plenty of 'leaders', but they are not effectively impacting our culture. We are all witnessing a moment of transition in the Church and the issue of a new kind of leadership is possibly the single most important question of strategy in our time. Whether the Church responds correctly or not will determine its survival.
The long experience of the Catholic Church has included many seasons of decline and renewal. Two opposite errors are to be avoided. The first is to assume that because the Church is divinely instituted, it never needs to be reformed. The second error would be to assail or undermine the essentials of Catholic Christianity. This would not be reform but dissolution.
The primacy of love with which Peter is invested in today's Gospel is in itself, as the Gospel suggests, an "indication of the kind of death by which Peter would give glory to God". It is a primacy whose significance is in dying for the flock. During the Mass inaugurating his pontificate Pope Benedict referred to Jesus' words "Feed my lambs" when he said, "feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer".
This is further affirmed in the second reading from the Apocalypse, where at the centre of the liturgy so richly and symbolically narrated is "the lamb that was sacrificed". The Church's nature was meant to be very specific and peculiar: not to be characterised by political, worldly power. It is only "the lamb that is sacrificed that is worthy to be given power". Because it is a power of a totally different nature.
The power of the Pope rooted in the primacy of love at the centre of the Church's life is a disarming power of a seemingly weak and vulnerable Church whose real source for ever remains the risen Christ. The Church is constantly being called to go back to that source and let go once for all of all earthly securities and power structures.