Acts 5:27-32;1:40-41
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19
Our readings today speak to us of the authority of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Risen Lord, and the authority he gave his apostles and His Church to teach in his name and pass down what He taught them. This authority, of course, is still with us in the Church today. While the Successor of Peter and the other Successors of the Apostles still have the authority given to them by Jesus Christ and they are the most obvious outward human expression of the Church's spiritual and temporal authority, these Scriptures have a message for every one of us about our duty to spread the Gospel. It isn't the duty of the clergy to spread the Gospel (the Good News of Jesus Christ), it is the duty of every believer.
In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter and some of the other disciples were placed before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish temple Council that administered not only the Temple, but the Jewish law during that time period. Peter would have been well aware of the reality that sitting on that very Council would have been some of the men who took the decision to put Jesus himself to death. They didn't want to hear anything else about the Nazarene, and they certainly didn't want to hear that they were responsible for his death, let alone that he had risen from the dead. They tried telling the apostles not to teach in the name of Jesus, Acts tells us that they didn't arrest the apostles at first because they were afraid of the reaction of the people. The followers of Jesus were already growing in number, so it begs the question: Why were they growing in number when the persecution of believers was real? Because those early followers of Jesus were not afraid to spread the message, and it wasn't just Peter and the 12, it was the whole Christian community. Very early in the life of the Church, who's first believers understood exactly what the words of Jesus meant when he said go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, and they set about doing exactly that, and they weren't afraid to tell the world exactly who Jesus was. The world didn't always want to follow in return, in fact most of the time they didn't want to do that at all, just as they don't today. The world has other priorities that usually have little to do with the things of God, but in the early Church those first Christians made God the priority and they wanted to spread the Gospel everywhere, and they understood the risks they were taking to do it.
It wasn't just the Apostles or the notables among the early followers of The Way (that's what the very first Christians called themselves, followers of The Way) who concerned themselves with the responsibility of bringing the message of the good news of Jesus to the world, every believer concerned themselves with spreading the Good News, and indeed that is what the Church teaches us, spreading the Gospel doesn't just happen here in church, it happens every day when we are going about our lives, and it's our responsibility to spread the message, firstly and most importantly by the lives we lead.
Today's Gospel gives us one of the most important post Resurrection appearances of Jesus. Peter and some of the other disciples went fishing and Jesus was waiting for them on the shore, John tells Peter that it's the Lord after the man on the shore tells them to throw the net on the right side of the boat and they would find fish. Not only did they catch fish but Scripture gives us a number, it says that they caught 153 large fish. One commentary I've read about this passage said that during this time period, the known number of kinds or breeds of fish was 153. I've never been able to verify that, but if there is any truth to that, it tells us something remarkable about what Jesus is trying to illustrate in this whole incident. He's trying to show his fishers of men that the whole world is welcome to be a part of his body if they choose. The Gospel also tells us that this is the third time Jesus showed himself to the disciples after he had risen from the dead.
St. Peter, we know from the accounts of the Passion, three times denied Jesus on the night before He was crucified. Here, Jesus asked him three times "do you love me" and when Peter responds in the affirmative the first two times he says "feed my lambs,"and "tend my sheep," but the last time the response of the Lord was "feed my sheep." We often think of this passage as representative of the Lord's charge to Peter after he had risen from the dead, and that interpretation isn't wrong, but there's more to it than that. The question that Jesus asks Peter is one that he is asking all of us today. When Jesus asked Peter the question first, he asked him "Do you love me more than these?" What this means in the most literal and obvious sense is "do you love me more than you love the things of this world, or the esteem of others?" After Jesus died and rose, we can see in today's Gospel that initially Peter went back to his family business of running a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, of course, followers of Christ have to find a way to support themselves like everyone else, indeed St. Paul chided some of the early believers for using their faith and their love of the spiritual life in Christ as an excuse not to work or go about the business of their daily living when he told the Thessalonians "if any will not work, neither let him eat," but Jesus was calling Peter to something more, to abandon attachment to the things of the world for the sake of spreading the Gospel. In the same Gospel passage Jesus is calling all of us, as disciples and followers of His, to abandon an unhealthy attachment to worldly things, because we are all supposed to be witnesses to the Gospel and spread the message, something that it's very hard to do if we're worried about the way the world looks at us.
Jesus' request to Peter is "feed my sheep," and there is a very real way in which this request applies to us. One cannot help but be drawn to our First Communicants last week. They are early in their journey of Faith, but we hope that we will be able to be an encouragement to them, whether we are a deacon or priest, or a catechist or helper, or just a parishioner that encourages the children to pray. Jesus told us that if we harm the faith of his little ones, it would be better for us if a millstone were tied around our neck and we were thrown into the sea. Whether it's the children just beginning their journey of Faith, supporting a new Catholic or someone showing an interest in the faith, or simply encouraging a fellow parishioner or visiting or calling a fellow parishioner who perhaps we haven't heard from in a while… We are all called to play a role in feeding the Lord's sheep and keeping the pasture well kept.
Jesus is asking us "do you love me more than these?" He is asking all of us if we love him unto death, just as he loved us so much that he gave his life for us. We are all faced with having to answer the Lord's question. What answer shall we give him?
