The Catholic Calendar for Friday, May 13, 2005
Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Our Lady of Fatima

Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word:
Acts 18:9-18
Psalm 47:2-7
John 16:20-23

A reflection on today's Sacred Scripture:

"Do you love Me more than these. . ."

While this is an intimate conversation between Simon Peter and our Lord, there is much here for us to reflect upon. Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves Him. Classical interpretations of this encounter have suggested that these three questions are asked to make reparation for the three times Peter denied Jesus. Also it is in this passage that Jesus definitively established Peter as the first leader of the early Church. In Matthew we know that Peter has been named as the future leader, here Jesus says clearly that Peter is to be the pastor--the one who feeds the sheep.

But what does Jesus say to us in the course of this passage? The three questions are asked to remind us of the critical and central importance of this question in our own lives today. Do you love Jesus? Do you love Jesus? Do you love Jesus? What then do we do to show it? Do we, like Peter, lead an entire Church and start an entire faith rolling into the future? No, that's already been done. Do we like Paul go about preaching and teaching through the entire landscape of the Roman Empire--nope, Rome doesn't exist any more.

How then do we show Jesus we love Him? The answer comes from earlier in the Gospel of John. "If you love me you will keep my commands." Now, which ones in particular are we to keep? Most importantly I think, "to love one another as I have loved you." In the first letter of John we are told that if we cannot love what we do see and touch here on Earth, how can we hope to love what cannot be seen or touched in heaven. So loving one another is a way of learning to love God. Keeping Christ's commandments are a way of showing how we love Him.

O Lord,
lead us and guide us in your paths,
show us your ways
and help us always to love one another
with your love, not our own.
Amen

- JuandelaCruz
(http://floscarmeli.stblogs.org/)

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