Follow Me

 

We are in the final days of the Easter season, and the Church today reads from the concluding chapter of John’s Gospel, the familiar story of the Risen Lord’s appearance to his disciples, where he revealed himself through the miraculous catch of 153 fish and then served them a breakfast of bread and fish. There’s a little church on the shore that marks the supposed site of this event. The story highlights the role of peter. So, the church is called “The Church of the Primacy of Peter.” Here, in this church today, as surely as on that distant lakeshore, The Risen Christ feeds us with food we would never have gotten on our own. Here too he challenges us, as he challenged Peter, with the question: do you love me?

Peter was asked this critical question three times – obviously corresponding to the three times Peter had earlier denied Jesus, his triple profession of love replacing his triple denial.

Listening in on this conversation between Jesus and Peter, we learn that what started out as a fishing story has now turned into a shepherding story. In relation to the world, Peter (and his fellow disciples) have been commissioned by Jesus to keep casting their nets, drawing people in – into the Church, which will continue the mission of the risen Lord in the world. But once inside, within the Church the dominant image is that of Jesus the Good Shepherd, who here shares that shepherding role in a special way with Peter. Others will share in shepherding the flock, of course, but Peter is particularly and specially called to follow Jesus in the role of the Church’s shepherd.

That special role continues in the Church in the ministry of the Pope. This mission of Peter and of his successor, the Pope, has been very much in the news lately, thanks in part to criticisms of the Pope by some American politicians but also because of his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“On the Protection of Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”), which will be released on Monday. After his election last year, Pope Leo indicated that he intended to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Leo XIII by responding to today’s technological revolution, as the earlier, 19th-century Leo had to the industrial revolution, guiding the Church in faithfully following Jesus’ command, “Follow me.”

Homily for Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, May 22, 2026.