What a scene it must have been.

  “Simon, son of John, do you love me more that these?” If I were him, I couldn’t have uttered an answer at all.

For his part, Peter would simply deny that he even knew who Jesus was. The people around him were members of the persecuting crowd, and he knew how delighted they would have been to tag him along with Jesus.

But before you give Simon Peter a simple excuse, take a look at it.

Have you or I ever felt unable to profess our own beliefs when caught in a threating situation? I suspect that Peter was the representative of the rest of us, who are weak at heart. Previously he had been the only disciple who blurted out the true identity of Jesus. “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” he had said (Mt 16:16), and then protested that his love for Christ would never be discarded or die. His slide from believer to denier was a lot more than just a mildly excusable mistake. It was a change of heart.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus does the unexpected: he asks Peter a second time, not if he was sorry for having sinned, not if he felt guilty, but whether he would affirm the real issue: love. Personal relationship is what was at issue.

  “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

I notice that Jesus does not simply use the name he himself had given to Peter, but includes the unredeemed one, Simon. Is he letting Simon slide back to his pre-believing status? I do not think so. He seems to me instead to be giving Simon freedom to choose again his basic stance in life, to reaffirm himself as Peter, the Rock. Not a word is mentioned about the denials, but they form the substance of this scene. Jesus had handed over to him the whole post-Resurrection church, whose job it will be to take care of the beloved ones of God. Feed my lambs, feed my sheep. No one would be able to do this unless his stance were one of love and care, as opposed to just following the rules.

So Simon Peter has affirmed his remarkable faith. That is the end of the scene, isn’t it?

Not at all. The dramatic third part follows, in which Jesus asks one more time the famous, intrusive question: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Simon Peter might have said, “I thought I had already answered your question. Lord, what was unclear?” But our reading says that instead he was distressed that Jesus asked him a third time.

Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you. (Gospel)

This squeamish sounding reply actually came from the truth-telling part of Simon Peter. It was not only a trust in Jesus’ knowledge of him, but also a realization of the truth presented by his own innermost core. Peter was at core a believer and a lover of Jesus.

This is why Jesus said to him finally, “Feed my sheep,” and why Peter could become such a promoter of the faith.