Do You Love Me?

Third Sunday of Easter

            When I was a freshman at Lansing Catholic in 1998, I had the great opportunity to be cast in our production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”  To this day it remains one of my favorite musicals. The part that I was assigned, I kid you not, was the Rabbi. One of my favorite songs in that musical (and there are so many great and memorable ones) is “Do You Love Me?”

            That is, of course, the very question that Jesus asked St. Peter in today’s Gospel: “Do you love me?”  And Jesus didn’t just ask it once; He asked it three times to make up for the threefold denial that St. Peter made when Jesus was being held by the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin.  Three times St. Peter says, “‘Yes Lord, you know that I love you.’”  And then Jesus explains what love means.

Jesus said to him…“Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but 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.”  He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.  And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.”

What must have been going through St. Peter’s mind when Jesus said this to him?

            Love, as Jesus explains to St. Peter, means binding yourself to another.  Peter binds himself to Jesus, to follow him, and even to be dressed by another and led where he does not want to go.  This was fulfilled when St. Peter was bound to the cross, upside down, and crucified, dying out of love for Jesus and following Him even through a similar form of death.

            We see how love binds in so many ways: it binds a man to a woman for life in marriage.  Because they love each other, they commit to an exclusive love for each other, a bond so strong that only death can break it.  We see how love binds in the example of parents who easily put thousands of miles on their vehicles driving Johnny and Alice to and from sports, band, plays, and other activities, even when the parent doesn’t feel like driving.

            Love binds the beloved to the lover.  And we, whether single, ordained, consecrated, or married, were all bound to another when we were baptized.  At that moment, God claimed us as one of His own in a bond which is so strong, it even survives death.  At baptism, we became the Lord’s beloved.

            But, even though love binds, that bond can be strong or it can be weak, based upon the response of the beloved to the lover.  The closer we stay with Christ, the stronger that bond is.  The more we wander away from Him, the weaker the bond is, though it is never broken.  If we wish to grow in love with God, then we must follow Him.

           

A painting of the Crucifixion of St. Peter in
the Church of Domine, Quo Vadis
outside of Rome

Each day Jesus renews His love with us.  Each day He asks us to renew our love with Him.  He asks us, “Do you love me? Will you follow me?”  Because love is free, it is never forced, but is an invitation.  Even St. Peter faltered a little.  As the story goes, when St. Peter knew that Nero was coming after him to arrest him and put him to death, St. Peter, at the advice of the Church in Rome, started to get out of Dodge.  And as he was walking on the Appian Way, he saw Jesus walking towards Rome.  This, naturally, startled St. Peter, who asked the Lord, “Domine, quo vadis?  Lord, where are you going?”  Jesus responded, “I am going to be crucified a second time.”  St. Peter than realized that he was not following Jesus, but was doing his own thing, and so returned to Rome and was crucified upside down.  We, too, falter at times, and would rather walk away from Jesus and not follow Him, but would rather do our own thing. 

            But love means being bound to the other, and in our love for God, it means following Him.  Sometimes that means that another leads us where we do not want to go.  Sometimes it means a change of heart and a change of mind so that the rule is not “my will be done,” by “thy will be done.”  It means making Him the top priority in our life, and forming our life around Him, not asking Him to form His life around us.  Sometimes it even means death.  But the beauty of love is that the beloved knows that the lover is worth it.  And in the case of our Divine Lover, God, we also know that His love is stronger than death, and He will never leave us.

            Jesus says to us in the words of the Song of Songs, “Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!  For see, the winter is past…Arise my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!”  He asks us, “Do you love me?  Will you follow me?  Will you strengthen the bond that was created when I claimed you as my own and saved you from sin and death in the waters of baptism?”  What will our response be to the love of God, a love so strong that He gave up His only Son to death so that we could live?  Do we love Him?