This is the link to the readings, this blog will make more sense if you read those first. http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050519.cfm Acts 5:27-32, 40B-41, Psalm 30:2,4,5-6,11-12,13, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19
I have a confession to make. I had a seriously hard time writing this homily and coming up with the one pearl to focus on. You could say I had homily block! I had meditated on the readings in adoration, I took notes on them and did an extensive study of the readings, however, life kept getting in the way. Whenever I sat down to concentrate on actually writing down the thoughts that were swimming around in my head life would come crashing in to interrupt me and the thoughts would fly right out one of my ears. A phone call, a text, an emergency trip to the store to get some supplies we suddenly can’t live without. I was getting very frustrated, to say the least.
Finally, early one Saturday morning, I sat down to write my homily, sure with this quiet things would flow nicely. I am feverishly working out the details and putting my thoughts in order when Faith, my daughter, wakes up, walks up to me, taps me on the shoulder, and in sign language says “Breakfast, what do I want?” in her most pensive look she can muster and gestures for me to follow her into the kitchen, which I do reluctantly.
We do an overly lengthy inventory of the cabinets, fridge, and freezer. We decide on a couple of eggs and a hash brown patty. So there I am stewing, but it wasn’t even stew that I was cooking! I was aggravated with this new interruption. When is the Holy Spirit going to give me my inspiration along with the necessary time? Then, as I’m about to flip the eggs I hear the words “Do you love me….Feed my sheep?” In the midst of my aggravation, I missed who the sheep were in my life. I am supposed to be a leader of my domestic church, the church that is my household and my family, and here I’m doing it begrudgingly. Who are all the sheep in our lives and do we lead them by our example or do we deny them?
Let’s take a step back to the night when Jesus was arrested. Later that night, Peter is around a charcoal fire, just like he's around a charcoal fire in today’s gospel but the story in John 18 tells a very different story. Peter denies Christ three times, once to a maid, then to a group of people who were also warming themselves at the fire, and finally to a slave related to the one whose ear Peter had cut off. Peter wasn’t denying the sheep in this story, no, he was denying the Shepherd! Fast forward to today’s Gospel and we see Peter is being called on the carpet by Jesus for the threefold denial. They are around a charcoal fire, it’s breakfast time, which may have been the trigger the Holy Spirit used to get my attention as I was cooking my daughter’s breakfast that day! Jesus takes Peter aside and lovingly asks him once, “do you love me more than these” using the term for “agape love” - a perfectly selfless love, what C.S. Lewis described as a “gift love”, the highest form of love. Peter responds with “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you” - however, Peter’s response uses the term “filial love” - like that of a brother or a great friend. Jesus responds “Feed my lambs” and then asks again, “Simon, son of John, do you love me” - agape - and again Peter replies with “Yes Lord, you know that I love you” - again using “filial”. Jesus asks a third time - “Do you love me” - this time the term Jesus uses is filial love. Jesus meets Peter where he’s at.
If this story ended here we would scratch our heads and wonder, did Peter get it now? Did Peter understand what Jesus wanted of him? Did Peter understand when Jesus said to him “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”? We get an answer to that question in the first reading for sure! In today’s first reading from Acts we see the apostles are rejoicing, but hold on a moment, what are the apostles rejoicing about? The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible states they were flogged, in the Douay-Rheims Bible, it says they were scourged. All for preaching about Jesus. According to Deuteronomy chapter 25 verse 2-3:
“...if the one in the wrong deserves whipping, the judge shall have him lie down and in the presence of the judge receive the number of lashes the crime warrants. Forty lashes may be given, but no more.”
The Apostles understand who Jesus really is now! Peter, who denied Christ three times, gets it now! He understands the line from Revelation, also known as the doxology of the angels - “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain”. Peter has accepted his mission, and according to legend fulfills it even to death as he was hung on a cross upside down as he felt unworthy to be hung right side up in the same manner as Jesus.
If we are doing the “God thing” correctly, we know who the sheep are in our lives and, honestly, it’s everyone we come into contact with every single day of our lives. How do we feed them? With everything going on in the Church a lot of non-Catholic people are suddenly showing interest in Catholicism. Sometimes they approach me about their newfound interest and it’s with hostility. I can react two ways, I can feed them a hate sandwich back or, I can do what scripture tells me to do:
Ephesians 4:15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ
I must teach the truth of the Church, established by Christ Himself, and I must do it with love.
Now let’s go back to that morning where Faith disturbed me in the midst of the best homily ever being written, a homily that wasn't meant to be. I cooked her eggs and hash brown in a much better state of mind after this whole breakfast contemplation and delivered them to her with a smile. When she finished, as I took my daughter Faith’s breakfast plate away she signed “thank you” and then “I love you” and her look conveyed her sincerity. That’s all that I needed at that moment to know I did the correct thing, I fed that sheep, and in doing so the Holy Spirit gave me the homily I should write.
It’s these small moments that we will have to feed the sheep we encounter daily and how do we do it? Regardless of our moods, regardless of what is already on our to-do list, regardless of how remedial the task may appear to us, we should do it with love. The same love the apostles felt after being flogged, a love that overcame the pain they were suffering, the pain that brought them closer to Christ. We need to be like the Apostles who went away happy to have been found worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus.
What better saint to look to for an example of how to live like this than St. Therese of Lisieux:
Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word: always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.
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