By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily at the opening Mass of the Knights of Columbus state convention, May 22, 2015 in Orlando.
"Do you love me?" Three times Peter is asked this question by Jesus — once for each of the three times Peter had denied Jesus. Peter for all his proud boasting had failed Jesus miserably. He lacked even the courage to acknowledge him before a servant who could not have done him much harm. Remember it wasn't to some Roman soldier who was interrogating him that Peter made his denials. It was to a woman who recognized him as a Galilean because of his accent.
The apostles too were quite a disappointment: all of them, except for John, had run away that night — the night of his arrest — and left him to die alone. So while they certainly were overjoyed to be reunited with him after the Resurrection, they must have been thinking: what does he think about us now? What will he say of our desertion, our doubts, our fears? And what does Jesus say? "Do you love me?"
How many of us — like Peter — have denied the Lord in word or deed, failing as he did because of fear or human respect? How many of us have at times deserted Jesus — like the apostles on that Holy Thursday night? Yet, the Gospel today reminds us that Jesus did not give up on Peter, or on the Apostles — and he doesn't give up on us either. In the face of the misery of our guilt and sin, the Lord answers with the mercy of his grace.
"Do you love me?" These words of Jesus are not spoken as a reproach. In asking Peter if he loved him, Jesus does not wish to inflict pain but to relieve the pain that Peter must have still felt in his heart for having denied the Lord. Jesus is not about throwing in our faces our past wrongs.
If Peter felt uncomfortable, so do we — it's called "Catholic guilt." Guilt can burden us — it is our sad reality whether we recognize it or not. But the Gospel calls us out of that reality into a new one. As Pope Francis wrote in Evangeliae Gaudium, "The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts of all who encounter Jesus; those who accept the love of God and his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness."
God has not given up on us. For this reason, if it is true that every saint has a past, it is also true that every sinner has a future. The door to that future is open always for us — it is the door of the confessional where sins committed after baptism are forgiven. Get rid of the sin, get rid of the guilt. God never gives up on us until he has forgiven the wrong and overcome rejection with compassion and mercy.
Mercy is the key word to understanding Jesus' life, to understanding his miracles — for God's love is made visible and tangible in Jesus' entire life and his miracles were all meant to teach mercy. Thus, mercy must be the foundation of the Church's life — for it is mercy that gives us the courage to look to the future with hope. This is why Pope Francis encourages us to see the Church as a field hospital — a type of MASH unit — where sinners are nursed back to health. And this is why he urges us to a renewed missionary spirit that takes us out of our comfort zones into periferies, to the least, the last and the lost.
There are those who think that they have made such a mess of their lives that God wouldn't want to have anything to do with them. They are, of course, quite wrong. Zaccheus and Levi, the tax collector, had taken wrong paths but Jesus ate with them; the woman caught in adultery, and the Samaritan woman had made a messes of their lives and yet Jesus loved them — he loved them in truth; that is, without either the sentimentality or false compassion that would excuse the sin or pretend that it didn’t matter. He wanted to restore them to wholeness, to bring them back into a wholesome way of living. That was news to their ears, indeed very good news.
“Do you love me?” “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep,” Jesus tells Peter. Peter the fisherman becomes Peter the shepherd. Pope Francis, who today walks in the shoes of that fisherman-shepherd, has called for a special Jubilee of Mercy that will begin later this year on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which also marks the 50th anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council. By calling for this special jubilee year, Pope Francis wishes to reawaken our consciences. He urges all of us to rediscover the Sacrament of Penance. And since mercy has been shown to us, we too must show mercy.
I would propose that you both individually and as members of the Knights during this Jubilee of Mercy give renewed emphasis to both the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The corporal works of mercy are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead; the spiritual works of mercy are to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offenses, bear patiently those who do us ill and pray for the living and dead.
As St. John XXIII said at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, "the Bride of Christ wishes to use the medicine of mercy rather than to take up arms of severity."
In the face of so much turmoil in the world, in the face of partisan divisions in our nation, in the face of the crises that beleaguered our cities and the hurt and divisions in so many families, who could say that the world doesn't need this medicine more than ever. We must strive to make our parishes, our councils, our families "oases of mercy."
"Follow me," Jesus tells Peter and each one of us. Whether we wear a clerical collar or a blue collar, each of us despite all our obvious shortcomings has received a vocation, calling to witness to mercy — for the mercy of God is the heartbeat of the Gospel.
"Do you love me?" Jesus asks each one of us. We answer, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you" to the extent that we bear the weaknesses and struggles of all our brothers and sisters.
