HOMILY: Friday of the 7th Week of Easter, June 6, 2025
by Megan McElroy, OP, for theWord ord.op.org
Readings: John 21:15-19
If we’re into social media, specifically Instagram, we are given an opportunity with every swipe, every reel, to follow someone. We also might have others following us. Whom we choose to follow and what we put out there for others to decide if they want to follow us says a lot about our values and how we want to be in the world today.
Today’s gospel was one we heard on Friday of the Octave of Easter, seven weeks ago. What might Jesus and the Church be saying to us to have this reading, specifically the exchange between Jesus and Simon Peter, proclaimed at the beginning and at the end of the Easter season every year?
Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. By the third time, Peter is clearly frustrated. You can hear it in his response, “Lord, you know everything! You know that I love you!” It’s kind of like he’s saying, “Can we please move on here?”
Jesus then says to him, “Follow me.” As if following him were something new. Peter had been doing it for the previous three years. In my imagination, I can almost hear Peter saying the same thing, “What are you talking about?! I am following you, I have been following you! What more do you want?!” But something had happened between this invitation to follow Jesus and the previous one three years earlier also on the shore. Jesus had been arrested, and Peter had denied him three times just as Jesus had predicted. Yes, Jesus knows everything, and still even after everything that has happened, Jesus again extends the invitation to follow him.
Following Jesus is a daily decision. Sometimes it’s a minute-by-minute decision. It’s always a decision in the midst of daily life. We might think it’s an easy decision to follow Jesus. But is it really? To follow Jesus is a daily decision to say YES, to do in memory of him what he has done for us and all humanity. What has he done? Forgiven and Loved us with everything he had even to the point of death and to the point of life. Perhaps this is the reason this gospel is proclaimed at the beginning and end of every Easter season – to remind us that being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, is to be one who forgives and loves with all we have (loving our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves – the greatest commandments).
To follow Jesus – to love and forgive as Jesus did – is a million seemingly insignificant decisions that prepare us for the big decisions.
Even after spending three years with Jesus, Peter failed in that first moment of a big decision. AND he was given another chance. In describing what was to come in Peter’s life, Jesus was telling him the way forward would not be easy. Other big decisions were going to come. And come they did for Peter.
And come they do for us.
The insignificant ways we follow Jesus – lending a listening ear, supporting those who are made poor, forgiving a sister or brother with whom we’ve had a disagreement, visiting the sick in the hospital, spending time with an elderly neighbor – lead to bigger decisions – speaking truth to power, standing with migrants at the border, standing up to bullies in the classroom and society, challenging corporations whose practices denigrate the gift of creation. They are not easy decisions. They may come at a price such as losing relationships or even our very lives. But such is the cost of discipleship to the One who is our Way, our Truth, and our Life.
Who will we follow this day, this moment? Will we click our way through life, following the latest trends on social media or will we listen to the voice of the Shepherd who calls us to follow, to tend, to feed the least, the vulnerable in our midst? To make the choice for the latter takes courage and conviction, fortitude and faith, it takes loving and forgiving that others might have life.
With what will we feed the lambs (the vulnerable) in our midst? How will we tend the sheep (the beloved community) today? Begin by saying yes to the call, the invitation, to follow Jesus.
