Simon Peter, do you love me?

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

30 April – 1 May, St. Katharine Drexel Parish

Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41

Rv 5:11-14

Jn 21:1-19

 

Praised be Jesus Christ! Alleluia! Alleluia!

        I think that a good choice for a single word to epitomize the Third Sunday of Easter would certainly be the word “WITNESS”. It fits really well with our celebration today of First Holy Communion too! Our duty as baptized Christians is to give witness to Jesus Who was Crucified and Died for our salvation, and Who rose again from the dead on the third day opening for us the Gates of Heaven. We have news which is just too good to be kept to ourselves. The whole world should benefit from what is ours in Jesus. It makes absolutely no sense for us not to give witness to the Resurrection, to the Kingship of Jesus Christ.

How do we do that? Well, we certainly testify to Christ as our Savior and Lord, showing we truly believe, by the character of our lives as people of faith. Our clearest witness, however, comes when we assist at Mass each Sunday. Thinking of First Holy Communion today, we know that if we are free of mortal sin, we can take that witness of assisting at Mass to a whole new level by not just being present in church for the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but also by receiving our Lord, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in Holy Communion. “He who eats My Body and drinks My Blood will have life in Me”, says the Lord. This, we firmly believe, is the only kind of life which really has any importance.

Today we read in the Book of Acts that the Apostles were willing even to suffer in order to give witness to the Risen One, to testify openly to Christ’s victory. The big question is how does that legacy, our standing in the same line with the apostles as witnesses to Christ’s Resurrection, how as spiritual descendants of those first witnesses do we live out that truth in our lives today?

Given the special opportunity we have this weekend, let’s talk about our mission as witnesses for Christ in terms of First Holy Communion, of receiving the Lord Jesus as the children will do today, receiving for the first time Jesus Who feeds us in this Sacrament with His own Body and Blood. In the Sacrament of the Altar, we are invited to receive the Lord and to bind ourselves to Him at His invitation. In terms of Church law, we know that Catholics, once we have made our First Holy Communion, we are conscience bound to assist at Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. From the very earliest days of the Church, we have the words of St. Justin Martyr who told the pagan judge who condemned him to a martyr’s death, that the saint and his fellow Christians would not renounce the Lord Jesus, they would not give up Sunday Eucharist. St. Justin explained very clearly that without Sunday, without Sunday Mass, a Catholic Christian cannot live.

        More recently (St. Justin lived between 100 and 165 AD), less than a hundred years ago that same faith of the earliest Christian martyrs perdured in the Church. Even without martyrdom being here in a free country, the Catholics of my mother’s generation understood very clearly that our witness to Christ was not first of all one of going out and preaching on a soapbox either in a virtual or in a real public square. Faithful churchgoing is an eloquent witness all by itself. In other words, we Catholics profess our faith in our Risen and Victorious Lord by simply getting up and moving in faith, crossing the threshold into church for Mass on every Sunday and Holy Day. My mother and most Catholics of her generation were convinced just like St. Justin Martyr that without Sunday Mass we cannot truly live. Obviously, if you don’t live within walking distance of church, then that obligation for young children right after First Holy Communion still falls on the shoulders of the adults into whose care they have been entrusted ever since their Baptism. The only difference is that now it goes beyond setting a good example of true faith, goes beyond teaching your children their prayers, teaching them the difference between right and wrong. It involves giving them the possibility of fulfilling their Sunday obligation. With their First Holy Communion it involves enabling them to give their witness to Christ in the great tradition of St. Justin Martyr by going to Mass.

        Witnessing to Christ by word and deed! The apostles responded to the officers of the Sanhedrin by professing: “We must obey God rather than men.” For them that played out by them risking punishment and persecution for the sake of the Name of Jesus. For all of the Apostles, except St. John the Evangelist, that ultimately meant giving their own lives as martyrs for the sake of Christ’s Holy Name. We are called to do the same.

        Our second reading today from the Book of Revelation shows Christ’s Sacrifice and our participation in the Lamb’s Victory as something cosmic, as bigger than anything that is or can be in the world. The Book of Revelation may seem far from our experience of the faith. Maybe that is why the Church also gives us the Gospel account of the disciples gone fishing on the Sea of Tiberias. It may be more personable and easier to comprehend than the Revelation passage, and as such may be more relevant to our personal or emotional needs to connect with Jesus personally. Out fishing and catching nothing in their nets, the disciples encounter Jesus Risen from the Dead. Everything about the scene and the miraculous catch of fish shows us just how personal such an event could be. In the Gospel here encountering Christ the Victor King becomes an experience we can identify with. Jesus sets them at ease, as He calls them His children. He feeds them breakfast on the seashore. Then He asks Simon Peter, “Do you love Me?” He asks three times, and in response to Peter’s Yes, Yes, Yes, Jesus gives the prince of the apostles the shepherding commission, “Feed my sheep!”

        There are no tricks or illusions in what the Risen One is asking of Peter in terms of a witness to be exercised in leading His Church and guiding the baptized. He says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

        There are no tricks or illusions in what the Risen One is asking of us as Catholic Christians. It can be as easy as never missing Sunday Mass through our own fault, but it could just as well demand of us the ultimate sacrifice of our lives in the face of hostility, in order to say, Jesus is more important to me than life. As I say, we are not called to be preachy or to pretend that we are particularly better than others, but just very simply to say… without Sunday I cannot live.

        Praised be Jesus Christ, Who loved us even unto death, death on a Cross. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.”

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI