Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter, May 17, 2024

John 21, 15-19

After Jesus had revealed himself to his disciples and eaten breakfast with them, he said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He then said to Simon Peter a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Simon Peter answered him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 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.”

“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”  The Lord is speaking to St. Peter during one of his appearances after his Resurrection from the dead.  They have just eaten a breakfast of the fish the Apostles have miraculously caught at the Lord’s direction.  The Lord Jesus asks Peter, Do you, Peter, love me more than the other Apostles do?  St. John, in recounting this episode in Greek, tells us that the Lord used a particular word that meant loving with a deep, lofty love.  Peter, for his part, is said to have replied using a word that did mean “I love you”, but in a more familiar way.  The Fathers help us to understand this.  St. Bede tells us that Peter, after his terrible denials of the Lord during his Passion, has now learned humility.  He does not want to claim that he loves Jesus more than the other Apostles do, because he knows he cannot know how much they love him, and he knows how much his love still needs to grow.  This is a very different Peter from the one who, multiple times at the Last Supper, asserted that he would die rather than deny his Master.  Jesus tries him three times, and Peter, formerly so impulsive and effusive, remains in his humility.  He is hurt by the Lord’s trying him a third time, but this comes from the guilt he still feels for his denials.  The Lord is pleased by his responses, by his hard-won humility.  The English translation here has the Lord saying to him, “Feed my lambs . . . Feed my sheep.”  The Greek tense, though, has the sense of “keep feeding my lambs, keep feeding my sheep.”  The “lambs” can be understood as “the little ones” in the Faith, those just beginning in the way of Jesus and for whom special care must be taken; the “sheep” are the Apostles and disciples who have known the Lord for the three years of his public ministry and whose faith is firmer and whose understanding is on a higher level. 

“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.”  The Fathers understood this statement of the Lord to refer to Peter’s eventual martyrdom.  Peter accepts this quietly in his humility, knowing full well that the Lord means that he will be crucified.  Again, we note how much changed he is from the exuberant and outspoken fisherman of not long before, the one who protested so vigorously when the Lord spoke for the first time of his own coming Passion.  The phrase “where you do not want to go” can be understood to mean that Peter would feel he had so much more work to do that he wanted to continue living awhile on the earth.  It could also refer to his expressed reluctance to die in the same manner as that by which his Lord was killed.  Apocryphal works also tell us that Peter’s followers in Rome tried to smuggle him out of Rome before he could be arrested, and that though at first he wanted to stay, he was persuaded to go, but then turned back upon seeing the Lord in a vision.

“Follow me.”  Again, the sense of the Greek word is, “Keep on following me.”  The understanding of the sense of the Greek imperative mood is important because it helps us see that the Lord did not see Peter’s denials as a cause for a permanent break in his following.  Peter had acted out of weakness in his denials, not out of the malice that motivated Judas.  We may take comfort from this for ourselves, that we may truly learn the humility necessary to love and obey the Lord Jesus, and that the sins we commit out of weakness do not permanently prevent us from continuing as his followers.

The thirty-seventh article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: The Books Used at Mass

In the first century or two of the Christian era, the Eucharistic Prayer was kept in the memory and recited from it.  We have this on the testimony of St. Justin.  But the readings from the Scriptures could only have been done through the use of a book.  Until the mid-300’s, books were written in scrolls.  Afterwards, the codex, which could contain more text and was easier to use, replaced the scroll.  The first Church books were these copies of books of the Scriptures (in scroll form) or of large parts of the Bible (the codex), with notations in the margins for what passages were to be read on which day.  After Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire, we begin to see books for Mass containing only the readings.  The book containing the non-Gospel readings was known as the Book of the Epistles, while that which contained the Gospel readings was known as the Book of the Gospels.  There were also books containing the psalms to be sung at Mass.  at this time too we have our earliest surviving sacramentaries, which contained the Roman Canon as well as the other prayers necessary for Mass.

The Roman Missal is divided into various sections for ease of use.  The front part of the book contains the prayers for each particular Mass, going from Advent through the Christmas season through Lent, Easter, and the time after Pentecost, which is now called “ordinary time”.  Following this section come the prefaces for the Eucharistic Prayers, some for Sundays in ordinary time, some for Sundays in Advent, some for various feast days.  After this are the unchanging prayers for the Mass.  Then come the prayers for the various feast days of the saints.  Various appendices fill out the rest of the book.

Next: The Prayers Said by the Priest Before and After Mass