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There is a scene in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” that is, at the same time, touching and comical. Tevye asks his wife Golde, “Do you love me?” And she responds, Do I what?” Tevye, thinking back on his daughter Tzeitel’s love for her new tailor/husband, and thinking even further back to the beginnings of his own arranged marriage with Golde, asks her again, “Do you love me?”
Golde then gives witness to her love with a litany of chores: “For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes… cooked your meals… cleaned your house…” and so on, as unspoken proof of a love well-lived, finishing up, singing, “…and if that’s not love, what is?” But Tevye presses his point and says, “But do you love me?” And Golde finally responds, “Yes, I suppose that I probably do.”
This recollection provides a lengthy introduction to the dialogue between Our Lord and Saint Peter in today’s Gospel passage, as Jesus asks Simon Peter repeatedly, “Do you love me?” I will now divide this question into three parts: Simon, son of John… do you love me… more than these… in order to better understand the interchange and to get some insight into how the Lord might ask the same question of us. Let’s have a closer look:
1) “Simon, son of John…”
Jesus addresses him as Simon even though Jesus had previously changed his name to Peter. Why? To make our educated guess, we go all the way back to Simon’s first Calling: a fisherman who was to become a “fisher of men.” Earlier in this passage, we heard this fisher of men say “I’m going fishing.” But he’s not just planning on dropping a line to see what he might catch for supper, this was something more like abandoning his Call and returning to his former way of life, perhaps not knowing what to do next.
Jesus had been inexplicably absent following His post-Resurrection appearances in the Upper Room. Separation from Christ was hard on the Apostles: Saint Thomas’s self-imposed isolation led him to doubt the Resurrection. Now Saint Peter’s temporary separation from the Risen Christ leads him to doubt his future as an Apostle.
Our Lord steps in then, with His surprising appearance:
+working a miracle
+cooking a curious breakfast
+asking curious questions.
In this miraculous appearance the Lord’s invitation to dialogue is not a simple question, such as, “Hey, Pete, we’re still good buds, right?” Instead Jesus is restoring what was jeopardized through Peter’s denials, renewing him in that “first fervor” in order to send Peter out to the world as the Vicar of Christ.
2) “…do you love me?…”
Guys don’t generally ask that question of other guys, so Peter must have been startled. In the three questions, there is a remarkable variety of synonyms in John’s use of the Greek:
+two different verbs for love
+two different verbs for feed/tend
+two different nouns for sheep/lambs
But the difference in meaning is only significant in the use of the word “love.” As Jesus asks, the verb changes, first describing friendship, then describing self-sacrificing love.
The First Vatican Council (1869) cited these verses in defining that after His Resurrection, Jesus gave Peter jurisdiction as supreme Shepherd and ruler over the entire flock. Asking about Peter’s capacity to love means that this measure of love for Christ will be the most necessary quality for leadership in the Church.
3) “… more than these?”
This could be read to mean “Do you love me more than these other disciples do?” But more probably it meant “Do you love me more than you love these others… as well as your fishing?” This question was not meant to evoke a comparison, but an articulation.
Saint John was known as “the Disciple whom Jesus loved,” but Saint Peter’s love was not like John’s. St. John was likely an adolescent, with the pure love of a young and uncorrupted heart. St. Peter’s love was a mature love: tested… failed… renewed… strengthened. Yet it remains that Christ chose Peter rather than John to lead His Church.
Choosing not the energy or wistful, all-consuming love of youth, wherein John was quicker at the Tomb to come to a realization of the Resurrection (“He saw and believed.”) and now is quicker in the boat to recognize the Lord on the shore, (“It is the Lord!”), the Lord’s choice was instead for wisdom, age and grace.
Having assured both Himself and Saint Peter of the importance of love for Christ, the Lord now warns Peter that leadership in the Church would not be a bowl of cherries, saying, “When you were young… when you grow old…” meaning when fervor weakens, fidelity supports, and an ever-maturing ministry continues.
Curiously, then, right here at the end of John’s Gospel (he doesn’t recount the Lord’s Ascension) Jesus says to Peter, “Follow me.” This seems a rather belated invitation, but echoes Peter’s First Calling where now love for Christ will be transformed into love for His Church from which the Lord, at His Ascension, will soon take leave.
What does this mean for us now? Only a few will be called to leadership in the Church as were Peter and the others. But all of us are called to a relationship with Jesus that will be as unique and individual as each person here. And, as Saint Peter experienced, the Call is not a once-for-all-time invitation, it’s ongoing, and will differ throughout our life as we, too, grow in wisdom, age and grace. At the center of this growth remains the recurring question from the Lord, “Do you love me?” In our response the Lord is looking for something like St. Peter’s “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you” rather than a more laconic response like Golde’s “I suppose that I probably do.”