St. Peter figures prominently in our Gospel today. In the days after the Lord’s resurrection, he and his companions had returned to fishing. Through a miraculous catch of fish they realized the Lord had come to visit them. He was waiting for them on shore and Peter, impulsive by nature, even jumped into the water to swim toward the Lord. There a campfire was prepared for breakfast.
I like to think that when St. Peter preached in the years that followed, he would often speak about how the decisive events of his life took place around campfires.
During Holy Week we heard that it was around the campfire in the courtyard of the high priest that Peter denied the Lord, not once but three times. Reflecting on that event, Peter would speak about his pain, despair, guilt and bitter weeping. The Gospels do not hide from us Peter’s weaknesses, struggles and failures.
What happens at the campfire at the Sea of Tiberius could not be more different. Here Jesus asks Peter, not once, but to Peter’s annoyance; three times “Do you love me?" Why three times? This is a reversal, a symbolic undoing of Peter’s triple denial on Holy Thursday night. Scripture scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown calls it, Peter’s “rehabilitation.” His three denials are now atoned for by a triple confession of love.
Despite his failure, the Lord reconfirms Peter as the Church’s center of unity, as the rock upon which the Church is built. Despite his weakness and fragility he is given the mandate to tend, to shepherd the flock of the Church.
We can be tempted to ask ourselves, “Why did Our Lord do this?” Why didn’t the Lord look elsewhere after Peter denied him? Cardinal Angelo Comastri says, that it is “Perhaps to tell us that the strength of Peter and of his successors and of the entire Church does not lie in man’s ability but in the mercy of God who always uses weak and fragile instruments to carry forward the great work of salvation.”
When we look at ourselves, we would have to admit that we are never all we want or hope to be. We are good in words, our intentions, our resolutions, but we know all too well how we can fail.
I would like to think that in his preaching, St. Peter would say that just as Jesus was on the shore and at that campfire for him, he is there for us. He would say that just as the Lord gave him a new beginning, he offers each of us a new beginning. St. Augustine, commenting on this passage, wrote, “Questioning Peter, Jesus questions each of us. His question to us is not “What have you done?” or “Who were you in the past?” The Lord’s question has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the present. His question is always, “Do you love me?”
Our past need not haunt us or keep us captive. Christ sets us on a new road. Sins can be forgiven, mistakes left in the past, stupidities can be buried, and hurts unrecorded. This is what the Lord does for us when we can truly say with Peter, “Lord, you know, all things, you know that I love you.”
