Good morning, everyone. In the Gospel passage which we heard on Sunday at Catholic Mass – I know other churches use similar series of readings – Simon Peter was asked by Our Lord 3 times, “Do you love me?” That would be difficult enough, to hear Our Lord 3 times after His death and resurrection ask him do you love me.
The first time Our Lord asks this question he does it a little bit different. He says, “Do you love me more than these?” This isn’t just more than the other apostles, he’s asking Peter if he loves Him more than anything else in the world. Is there anything more important to Peter than Our Lord, or is Our Lord the most important thing in His life.
That’s a difficult question to be asked, but it’s a question we should be asking ourselves. We are called by Our Lord to God above all things. And yet, I think we often put other things as more important, we love other things, more than we love God. We then end up making excuses why we aren’t following Our Lord as we should.
We find time for many things in our lives, those things we enjoy or desire. Do we ever find time for God in prayer and worship? We are truly called to love God above all things, putting God first in our priorities, and to put everything else 2nd to Him. We are called to look at the example of the apostles and the great saints who have gone before us, and gave up their families, their jobs, their possessions to follow Our Lord. Some even gave their very lives to follow Him.
We are called to do that because Our Lord in his 2 great commandments said that we are to “love God with our whole heart, soul and being. Second to that is to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we are not following God with that true love, we are not following that first commandment.
I think we realize deep down that there is a risk when we love God above all things because we end up doing and saying things at are not popular, and there will be pushback. Look at the prophets in the Old Testament and the Apostles after Our Lord ascended into heaven. They did and said things that caused them great greif. People became upset with them.
If we love God above all things, we will do and say things that will cause others to become upset with us. There will be difficulty in dealing with others. There will be problems that arise. People will not be happy with what we do and what we say.
But God will reward us if we love Him above all things. He will begin to give us the Grace in this life, the true joy that we desire, the true joy that comes from following Him, and cannot not be received from anything else but God. We will also receive eternal joy in the next life, which nothing else on earth can promise.
Above all, we should desire to love God because God wishes to spend eternity with us.
Like He asked Simon Peter, Jesus asks us “Do you love me more than these?” Of course, our answer should be as Simon Peter said, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
(Post reflection music: Newsboys – Shine)
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