A Reflection for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
Find today’s readings here.
He said to him the third time,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Picture this: My grandmother sat at our glass table top eating breakfast and quizzing me on my spelling words in the 15 minutes before the school bus was to arrive and fetch me. Between crunching some form of cereal with zero sugar and a ridiculous amount of fiber, she would say, dangling hair curlers and all, “Yes, that’s correct.” Then she would repeat the same word for me to spell that I had correctly recited letter for letter. I thought it was so silly. I had no appreciation for the repetition. After five or six times successfully spelling the same word right, then she would move to the next.
Whenever I hear today’s Gospel, I go back to the repetition of repeating my spelling words. Who knew my grandmother’s method—repetition, repetition—was a tried-and-true method of Ignatian pedagogy? Who knew Peter loved Jesus? I am most sure it wasn’t Jesus who needed the reassurance.
“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus insists The Word be repeated. He insists that you keep your eye on the love of God, and then the second greatest commandment follows. To love thy neighbor, feed my lambs, and tend my sheep.
How easy it is today, or in any generation for that matter, to be distracted from the love of God. How easy it is today, or in any generation for that matter, for a human being to say one thing and do another.
One lesson the repetition is good for, aside from the obvious cultivation of habit necessary for virtue, is the growing confidence that we believe in our capacity for The Word. We can get it right despite, like Peter, having answered for it wrongly before.
After all, in the final exam, when standing in line at the spelling bee, the word will be simple, quintessential. The Word will be Jesus, and he’ll ask again, “Do you love me?”
