Do You Love Me?
Peter sits by a charcoal fire eating breakfast with the risen Lord, when the question comes: "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Three times Jesus asks one for each denial, one for each chance to make things right. Our Lord doesn't demand grand speeches or dramatic gestures. He simply wants to know: beneath all our human fumbling and failure, do we truly love Him?
Here's the thing about love - it's not really about the warm feelings we get during a particularly moving homily or the tears that spring up during Adoration. Those moments are precious gifts, but Jesus is looking for something deeper. When He tells Peter to "feed my lambs" and "tend my sheep," He's saying that love proves itself through service, through getting our hands dirty in the messy work of caring for others. It's easy to say we love Jesus when we're surrounded by stained glass and sacred music, but what about when we're stuck in traffic, dealing with difficult family members, or facing our own stubborn pride? Our actions in these ordinary moments reveal the true temperature of our hearts far more than our Sunday best behavior ever could.
Let's be honest - pride is probably our biggest stumbling block in this whole "following Jesus" adventure. We want to be the hero of our own spiritual story, the one who finally "gets it right" and can look down (ever so humbly, of course) on those poor souls who are still struggling. But here's the beautiful, humbling truth: we're all Peter. We're all disciples who boldly declare undying loyalty one moment and then run away when things get tough. We're all sinners saved by grace, standing on level ground at the foot of the Cross. Some of us, by God's mercy, are stumbling toward the light, while others are wandering further into the darkness - but none of us gets there by our own merit. It's all gift, all grace, all God's doing.
So what does it mean to follow Jesus in this mixed-up, broken, beautiful world of ours? It means getting up each day and choosing love over selfishness, service over comfort, truth over convenience - not because we're better than anyone else, but because we've been captured by the heart of the One who died for us. It means feeding His sheep with whatever gifts we've been given, whether that's making sandwiches for the homeless, listening patiently to a struggling friend, or simply offering a genuine smile to the grocery store clerk. The Kingdom of God isn't built by spiritual superstars; it's built by ordinary people who keep saying "yes" to extraordinary love. And here's the wonderful secret: when we stop trying to prove how much we love Jesus and simply start loving the people He puts in front of us, we discover that He's been loving them through us all along.
©2025 James Dacey Jr.
