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"It is the Lord!"

John is the first to recognize that the Risen Christ is there, on the shore, cooking breakfast for them. Other painters dwell on the drama of Peter's immediate jump into the water, but something even more dramatic is happening in this amazing moment.

The more dramatic event, that the painter of this mural, Bertrand Bahuet seems to grasp, is that John didn't jump into the water.

It is astonishing when you think about it. Even after Peter jumped in, John stayed in the boat. What amazing restraint. And then, remembering these events, perhaps decades later, he doesn't explain why Peter jumped and why he didn't.

Peter and John. What different paths these two men took to arrive on that boat that morning! Peter had denied Jesus three times -- not only that, but he did it after he'd been warned that he would do it! Then, when his Lord, whom he had already recognized as the Son of the living God, was killed, Peter hid. Meanwhile, John was the only one of the twelve who stayed with Jesus throughout his passion, remaining at the foot of the cross through Jesus' agony and death.

Can we imagine ourselves in John's place? Might not some of us grow a little superior, a little entitled? Might not some of us think, 'Heck, who stuck with him through it all? Don't I deserve to be the first to embrace him now? Haven't I established that I ought to be first among the disciples? I mean, Jesus even entrusted his Mother to my care!'

But not John. He remembered that Jesus said that Peter was the rock on which he would build his Church, and so John deferred to Peter. John recognized Jesus first, but he acknowledged Peter as leader and let him go ahead of him. Perhaps he also understood that Peter's need was greater than his own -- precisely because he knew that Peter had denied Jesus. He knew that Peter carried this terrible wound. Out of charity, he sent Peter to the Lord, knowing that only Christ could heal him.
This episode echoes an earlier one -- when Peter and John ran to Jesus' tomb after they learned that it was empty. John, being younger, arrived first, but he did not enter first.

How he must have loved Peter! I have thought so many times about this restraint he showed and his reverence before Jesus' choice of Peter. Would I have been capable of waiting and allowing anyone to enter first? Would I have been able to keep dry when my beloved Jesus was only a few strokes away? John would have had the best of excuses if he had gone first: impetuous youth, the confusion and emotion of the moment, his sense of special brotherhood with Christ after Jesus had entrusted his Mother to his care. But instead, John waited.

"This teaching is difficult..."

There are many teachings that seem difficult -- just as difficult for us as the idea of eating someone's flesh and drinking his blood must have seemed to the disciples who left Jesus after he told them that he is the Bread of Life. On the face of it, the disciples who left him were being reasonable, seeing by the little light they had to go by. If anyone were to say the same thing to us today, we'd think he was a crack pot. I mean, just choose the most morally consistent, wisest, most charitable person you know and imagine that person telling you that you have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. It's outrageous and it makes no sense. Particularly if you can really imagine that you've never heard of the Eucharist, never ever. What else could they think but that he was either expecting them to come at him with knives and forks -- or that he was playing around with them?

But Jesus wasn't the most morally consistent, wisest, most charitable person anyone's ever met -- at least, he wasn't only these things...he was more. No one at all would have stayed with him after his enigmatic words about eating him if they were only following him on the basis of his moral stature, wisdom, or charity.

The disciples who did stay with Jesus didn't understand him any better than the others. Did Peter say, "Oh, yeah, of course I got that -- Bread of Life? Yeah, we eat human flesh all the time..."? No, Peter didn't understand -- no one understood. So then why did he and the others stick with Jesus? Why didn't they just dismiss him as a nut job or someone who was toying with them?

Peter's answer is so simple and so brave and so remarkable: "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

That question -- "To whom can we go?" -- haunts me. It is so full of humanity and helplessness. Nothing else, no one else, can give us what we need. It is the question of someone who has walked down other avenues, placed vain hopes in people or things that have failed him. Morality, wisdom, charity -- all these things fail us in the end. Peter didn't say, "Well, Lord, we haven't met anyone who is as upright as you, as wise as you, or as loving as you, so we'll stick with you." Because a person can be all those things, but when he starts talking crazy talk, you pick up and move on. Peter's answer is that Jesus is "the Holy One of God." And this makes all the difference. If someone really is the Holy One of God, he can even follow a course of action that you consider madness -- like willingly walking into a trap set by men who want to torture and kill him -- and when you quite reasonably counsel him against this insanity, he can call you Satan and tell you to take a long walk off a short pier -- and you'll be unable to tear yourself away from him.

What is this holiness of God that turns everything on its ear? It is this quality that I'm looking for and cannot live without. My life, with all its sadness, complexity, and confusion is there, in front of me, but this other quality runs through it, too. Like a thread of light, sometimes pulled so thin that it's barely perceptible and other times swelling so thick that it overpowers everything, this perplexing holiness will not be denied.

What are the words of everlasting Life? They are not primarily moral words, wise words, even words of love...they are the evidence of a Life that throbs beneath the surfaces of things and that generates the reasons for, the meaning of, all the inexplicable things we face. They are the words that knit us together in our mothers' wombs. They are the words that we repeat to one another, even when we make no sounds, when we live as one thing.

But I can't pretend to understand them. I'm at a loss, just like Peter was. I can't explain them to you. I can only invite you to come and see.

"Simon, Do You Love Me?"

A passage from the book by Luigi Giussani, Stefano Alberto and Javier Prades, Generating Pathways in the History of the World:

 In Chapter 21 of St John's Gospel we find the fascinating documentation of the historical birth of the new ethics. The particular story that is documented there is the keystone of the Christian conception of man, of his morality and of his relationship with God, with life and with the world.
The disciples are on their way back at dawn after a bad night on the lake, in which they had caught nothing. As they approach the shore they see on the beach a figure in the process of preparing a fire. They would see later that on the fire were fish collected for them, for their early morning hunger. All at once John says to Peter, "But that's the Lord!". Then all their eyes open and Peter dives into the water just as he is and reaches the shore first, followed by the others. They sit in a circle, in silence; no-one speaks because they all know it is the Lord. Laying there eating they exchange a word or two amongst themselves, but they are all afraid at the exceptional presence of Jesus, the risen Jesus, who had already appeared to them several times.