3rd Sunday of Easter (Peter... Do You Love Me)
Songs from our past have a way of taking us back to experiences of the past, bringing back memories. Today’s Gospel is like that for me. I’ve probably told you that long ago, a couple days each week, I used to help care for an elderly Sulpician priest name Fr. Peter Chirico. The charism of Sulpicians is to be teachers in seminaries. Fr. Peter had Parkinson’s and needed help getting out of bed and dressed. I was blessed to have that time with him. One day he asked me if I had ever considered priesthood. I eventually told him yes and he helped me to begin formally discerning.
A couple years later I was accepted as a seminarian and would be soon moving to Wisconsin to start. At the same time Fr. Peter was soon to move to Baltimore, to an assisted living facility for Sulpician priests. But before he was to leave, he was asked to attend the jubilarian’s dinner at the annual priest’s retreat in Ocean Shores. I was asked if I could drive him there and was happy to. Having just been formally accepted as a seminarian, I was excited about starting seminary and potentially becoming a priest. So, to arrive at the Convention Center in Ocean Shores with Fr. Peter, to join the priests of the archdiocese was exciting for me.
Soon after we arrived, the priests gathered for Mass. The Gospel we heard today was proclaimed. In that setting, with Fr. Peter—this aging and frail man, whom I helped to dress and who would soon be moving to a place where he could get the assistance he needed—on that occasion, I heard that reading as I had never heard it before: “Do you love me, Peter?” “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Good…Peter, 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….follow me.”
In thinking about what this command of Jesus means to me in my priesthood, having made promises of obedience, of celibacy, and simplicity of life, I can’t help but also think about the vocation of marriage, and how it demands much the same things if it is to be authentic and healthy. Maybe not obedience to one’s spouse in the strict sense, but certainly obedience to the vocation itself. Maybe not celibacy, but it certainly demands chaste love that is c exclusive, and that aspires to self-giving to one’s spouse, rather than using him/her. And like simplicity of life, marriage demands considering first the real needs of one’s spouse and whatever family God blesses them with, above one’s own needs.
The beautiful vocation of marriage calls for promises, not so different from priesthood and religious life. It’s not always easy nor is it what we might desire for ourselves in a given moment. But as I say time and time again, the only way that our lives are to have meaning—whether we are avowed religious, married or even as long as one remains single—is if we are willing to give our lives away for the good of others—laying them down for Jesus.
Consider the life of St. Peter himself. Yes, he flaked as a friend and disciple, and undoubtedly dealt with shame. In all the ways that he was driven by self-preservation, especially when it seemed to matter most, Jesus gave him the chance to chance to make it right, to pledge his love. From there Peter would go on to find true meaning in his life by giving it away, ultimately by his own crucifixion. In obedience, he laid his life down for the good of those Jesus entrusted to him, and so much good came from that sacrifice.
As for my life as a priest: it’s blessed for sure, sometimes I feel like I’m so busy that I risk running thin and not being sufficiently rooted in my life of prayer and spiritual reading. Sometimes there’s so little time for an introvert like me to regroup. There’s a part of me that must sometimes say ‘no’ to one thing or another (and occasionally I do), but there’s another part of me that deeply wants to say ‘yes’ to it all, in part, as a way of answering Jesus’ question: “Todd, do you love me?”….”Yes!”
At the end of my life, I want to be like a car that simply runs out of gas, rather than having to face-up to all the ways I was preoccupied with self-care and self-interest. After all, my life is for you. If it’s indeed, like a car that just uses up all its gas, my task is to ration the fuel, so that the tank doesn’t empty prematurely—in other words burn-out. As I pray for you in what our Lord calls you to—and yes, he is calling you to obedience to the promises that are rooted in your call, he is calling you to lay down your life. Again, as I pray for you in that, please pray for me too, that I follow Jesus’ call to love him by loving you.