In today’s Gospel, we change gears. Over the past several weeks, the Gospels have come from Jesus’ Last Supper discourse. Now, we instead have a passage taken from the ending of the Gospel according to John, and, in particular, we have the conversation between Jesus and Peter. While there are many noteworthy things in this passage, there are two things that stand out, as Fulton Sheen indicates: first, that Jesus calls Peter “Simon, son of John,” and not “Peter,” and second, the dialogue itself, and particularly the word “love.”
A Struggle
We can appreciate the fact that Jesus calls Peter by his old name: “Simon, son of John.” Within each of us, there is a struggle, as Sheen points out, between “the greatness of our call, and the weaknesses and failings of our old nature, the ‘old man.’” We could call it the struggle between “Simon” and “Peter.” Yet, Christ does not leave us alone in our struggle; indeed, He came to meet Peter where he was at.
Compassion
Secondly, the dialogue itself, with the words used for love, reveals Christ’s profound compassion. It is hard to translate exactly what the text says, since the Greek uses two different words for love. The first is agape, which means a sacrificial love, the highest, supernatural love. Christ uses this the first two times He asks Peter if he loves Him. The other Greek word for love is philia, which means a merely natural, human love and affection; this is the only one Peter uses, and the one Jesus uses the third time.
In the last exchange, when Christ Himself uses Peter’s philia, He is scaling down His demands on Peter. Again, He meets Peter where he is at.
Christ Comes to Us
In our lives, too, Christ comes to us. Fr. Jacques Philippe puts it this way. He writes: “God is ‘realistic.’ His grace does not operate on our imaginings, ideals, or dreams. It works on reality, the specific, concrete elements of our lives. Even if the fabric of our everyday lives does not look very glorious to us, only there can we be touched by God’s grace. The person God loves with the tenderness of a Father . . . is not the person we would have liked to be or ought to be. It is the person we are. God does not love ‘ideal persons’ or ‘virtual beings.’ He loves actual, real people. . ..
A great deal of time can be wasted in the spiritual life complaining that we are not like this or not like that, lamenting this defect or that limitation, imagining all the good we could do if, instead of being the way we are, we were less defective, more gifted with this or that quality or virtue, and so on. Here is a waste of time and energy that merely impedes the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. What often blocks the action of God’s grace in our lives is less our sins or failings, than it is our failure to accept our own weaknesses. . .. The Holy Spirit never acts unless we freely cooperate. We must accept ourselves just as we are, if the Holy Spirit is to change us for the better.”1
Let us pray, in a particular way through the intercession of Mary, Mother of the Risen Lord, for the grace to surrender to Christ and cooperate with the Holy Spirit, and thus become the saints God wants us to be.
1 Interior Freedom, 32-33.
