Homily For Friday Seventh Week of Easter Year C, 6th June 2025

 

Readings: Acts 25:13-21; Ps.103; John 21:15-19

Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Emenike  Onyia.

EXPERIENCING THE LOVE AND RESTORATION OF THE LORD JESUS

The ups and downs of life have been a great experience and a challenge to humanity. Hence, every day is a new struggle. Life struggles, struggle for survival, struggle against the manipulation of the evil ones, more challenging is the struggle of our own self,, especially our weakness and sinfulness. These struggles are evident in the life of the disciples of Jesus. 

All the time they were with Jesus, they struggled to be like him, to follow his ways and to understand him, and it wasn’t easy. In the cause of these struggles they failed, denied, forsaken, and sinned against the Lord Jesus despite their love for him. But this was well predicted by Jesus who warned them to remain steadfast even in the midst of these struggles. 

However, after all the struggles and fall during his passion and death, Jesus now needed to strengthen his disciples for the great task ahead before departing from them. So, on the occasion of the Gospel passage today, Jesus said to Peter, the leader of his Apostles, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these others do?’ He answered, ‘Yes Lord, you know I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ 

A second time, he said to him, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He replied, ‘Yes, Lord, you know I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Look after my sheep.’ Then he said to him a third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was upset that he asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and said, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.

Here we can imagine the disposition of the disciples when seeing the Lord after going back to their past ways of life. And as they sat together round the fire, eating silently the meal which Jesus had prepared, and gazing silently at the Lord’s silence. It must really be a great moment of tension as to how the oppressive silence was to be broken. 

One would have wondered how Peter’s heart must have been troubled when the great silence was broken with the words: Simon, son of John, do you love me? These three times questions have a special force in the restoration of him who had three times denied his Master, and now three times declares his love for Him, and he is three times restored and entrusted with a great task of feeding his master’s sheep. 

From this gracious act, we see how God through Jesus treats a soul conscious of its sinfulness and fault; and in Peter’s disposition,, we see an illustration of how a soul, conscious of its sinfulness and fault, should behave before God.  This gracious event is very symbolic, not just that the Lord had forgiven Peter for his threefold denial at the moment of his arrest and suffering, but also that the Lord restored him again as the leader of his flocks and the entire Universal Church.

Dear friends, in our struggles in this life, we have done ugly and sinful things that we regret and don’t want to remember or talk about, just like St Peter. Wishing we could have changed or avoided them, but there is nothing we can do about them anymore except to seek restoration. And this restoration is what Jesus is offering us today as he says: My child, do you still love me? Do you really love me? Do you love me more than all the things of this passing world? 

All we have to say in consciousness of our faults and sinfulness is: Lord, you know everything, yes, I truly love you. And just like St Peter, the Lord Jesus will not only forgive us, but he will restore us to a greater glory. So why struggling in silence, it’s time to break open the hidden wounds of sin in our hearts, for the Lord wants to heal and restore us once again so that we can be open and free to receive the Holy Spirit the promised Paraclete, who will restore us afresh to God’s greater glory.

LET US PRAY: Lord God, as we anticipate the coming of the Holy Spirit, we come to you today conscious of our faults and sinfulness. Grant us your healing and restoration through Christ our Lord. Amen. God bless you.