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"Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
Simon had previously been so certain of his love for Jesus, so certain that he would be willing even to die for him. When push came to shove he was capable of acting violent in defense of Jesus but he was not capable of standing with Jesus peacefully and without violence. He was not capable of surrendering with Jesus or to allow himself to be handed over as Jesus himself handed himself over. For Simon, without the distracting rush of violence, the whole darkness of the dark hour was too much to bear and he fled from Jesus. For the rest of that evening he refused to be identified with his Lord, fearing that if he was he might be forced to share in the fate of Jesus. He could not accept being rendered powerless as Jesus had allowed himself to be. He had proven to be anything but a rock and so it is appropriate that in restoring him Jesus began by calling him Simon. He did this not to demean him so much as to reestablish him. He wanted Peter to realize that his solidity was always going to come from Jesus himself.
Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time,
"Do you love me?" and he said to him,
"Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."
Just as Peter had denied Jesus around a charcoal fire so too here on the shore at breakfast near a charcoal fire did he affirm him. Was Peter too broken to repent? Clearly not. He had fallen far, but he had not abandoned himself to despair as had Judas. He still bore a love for Jesus in his heart that gave him hope and that was more compelling than any self-doubt he may have felt. Jesus, for his part, did not tell Peter that he would now need to sit in the sidelines and watch since he had proven himself too flawed to be a disciple. Indeed, Jesus asked Peter to prove the depths of his contrition precisely by the way in which he would take on the role of leadership in the Church and as shepherd of the sheep. This was clearly not something one would ask of another if they were defective beyond repair. Yet we can see that in this penance given by Jesus there was something more than the mere verbal undoing of his denial. There was the requirement that he begin to do now what he could not do during the Passion, that being to lay down his life for the sheep.
Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger,
you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted;
but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will dress you
and lead you where you do not want to go."
He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.
Peter got away with remaining dressed and going where he chose as Jesus had his clothing stripped and was led to the cross. But it was only a temporary reprieve during which he was to learn of his own weakness and the necessity to rely on Jesus for strength. He could not then go to the cross alongside Jesus. But he could follow after him.
And when he had said this, he said to him, "Follow me."
The good news about the restoration of Peter is that it implies that there is no one who is too broken to be restored, none too lost to be found, or too far gone to be saved. It means that even our egregious failures can be made to serve a larger purpose in the narrative being woven out of worldly events by divine providence. We can and must learn our own limits and our inherent weakness so that we can more and more come to rely on Jesus for strength. It is not simply a binary switch where we move from flawed to perfect once and for all. Rather there is a continual back and forth, but with increasingly more forward progress and less backsliding since "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (see Romans 5:20).
Our confidence is not meant to be in ourselves. It comes rather from knowing what Paul knew and proclaimed so clearly that none who heard was able to misunderstand.
Instead they had some issues with him about their own religion
and about a certain Jesus who had died
but who Paul claimed was alive.
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