Do You Love Me?

Four questions: 
Where are you? 
What do you want? 
Can you drink the cup?

“Do you love me? …
Do you love me? …
Do you love me?” (Jn 21:15-17)

Remember the scene: the seaside at dawn, discouraged disciples in their boat, a stranger on the shore, a charcoal fire burning, a breakfast of bread and fish. Jesus draws Peter aside to ask him three times a question that will cause him pain, because it reminds him of his failure and denial of the love he is now asked to profess.  Even the smell of the charcoal fire sends him back in his memory to a night he would rather forget.

The Church of St Peter in Gallicantu is located outside the Old City of Jerusalem, at what is believed to be the site of the palace of Caiaphas.  It is dedicated to the mystery of Peter’s denial, repentance, and recommissioning, hence the name “gallicantu,” which means “cock’s crow.”  The site has a complicated history, having seen four churches rise and fall over the centuries.  A Byzantine shrine dedicated to Peter's repentance was erected on this spot in AD 457 but was destroyed in 614 by the Persians.  A second church erected in 628 was destroyed in 1009 by the Caliph Hakim.  A third church was built by the Crusaders in 1102 and given its present name.  After the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, the church again fell into ruin, to be rebuilt a fourth time between 1920 and 1931 and restored between 1994 and 1997.  Today a golden rooster may be seen on the sanctuary roof, and the crypt chapel contains beautiful icons depicting three scenes from St Peter’s life.

The icon to the right of the altar, which depicts Peter’s threefold affirmation of love, brings to completion the icon on the left, which depicts his threefold denial.  The central icon, Peter’s repentance as he weeps in the cave, is what joins the other two.  There is much that could be said of this central focus on repentance, the change of mind that takes Peter from denial to affirmation.

On the left, we see Christ looking at Peter after his betrayal, with a striking contrast between Peter’s hands gesturing denial and almost pushing Jesus away, while Jesus’ hands are bound.  He is a prisoner.

On the right, once again we see Jesus looking at Peter, this time with his questions, and Peter’s hands, previously gesturing denial, are now held out towards the Lord to receive the shepherd’s staff, symbol of the mission Jesus is giving him, a mission of self-sacrificial love: “Feed my lambs … Tend my sheep … Feed my sheep” (Jn 21:15-17).

In the center of the sanctuary, we see Peter in a cave weeping bitterly.  The Latin Vulgate translation of this verse, posted on a plaque beside the icon, reads: “Et egressus foras Petrus flevit amare.”  In English: “And Peter went out and wept for love.”  This bitterness with which Peter wept is the bitterness of one utterly sorrowful for having betrayed his beloved.

Peter cannot stand to have Jesus look at him after his denial, so he runs and hides in his cave.  At the shores of the sea of Galilee in the early morning, with a charcoal fire burning, Jesus looks at him again and asks him to remember, to expose his wound.  He does this not to shame him, but to free him from the discouragement that has him returning to his fishing, to heal him of his bad conscience, to remake and recommission him as a fisher of men.  Amazingly, the man Jesus choses as leader of his Church is one who has fallen, who has failed publicly in fidelity.  And this very humiliation becomes the ground from which his mission of humble love and service is built up.

After a rupture, the process of repair requires that we confront the wound, come out of hiding, reveal what is broken so that it may be healed.  The question: Do you love me? repeated again and again, gives us, like Peter, a chance to face our failures, to acknowledge and negate our betrayals of love, to reaffirm our intention and desire to love, and to receive a mission, a way forward, so that shame may be transformed into beauty, humiliation into humble love.

Another image may be helpful here.  Have you ever heard of Kintsugi? This is the Japanese art of mending broken pottery, by glueing together the shards, and instead of hiding the cracks, adorning them with gold, such that the repaired object is as beautiful and valuable, if not more so, than the original.  Doesn’t this sound a little like the words of the Exsultet: “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!” (Easter Vigil).  Doesn’t this sound like St Peter in Gallicantu, the complicated history of the buildings and of the man they honor?  Through the question “Do you love me?” we are offered the possibility of repairing the vessel of our life and making it more beautiful than it was before, the opportunity to say “Yes, you know that I love you” without remaining captive to our failures.

I began these reflections on the four questions by noting that they can be addressed to us as a community, and not only as individuals.  It is one thing to accept our personal brokenness before the gaze of Christ and be healed and recommissioned.  It is a much greater challenge to face this as a community – to acknowledge our failures, our brokenness, and our need for repentance and recommissioning.  My deepest desire and hope, my dream for our community, is that we could see one another as brokenness-becoming-beauty, and that we could help and support one another to heal and grow into the mission of creating yet more beauty – the beauty of the forgiven sinner, who loves much, because she has been forgiven much.

So let us ask ourselves, allow Jesus to ask us: do you love me?

Sources:

https://www.stpeter-gallicantu.org/

https://www.faithandculture.com/home/2019/11/13/peters-threefold-affirmation-of-christ

https://www.faithandculture.com/home/2019/10/29/peters-threefold-denial-of-christ

Thompson, C. (2010). The Anatomy of the Soul. (Chapter 12, “The Repair of Resurrection,” pp. 221-234). Tyndale Publishing.

Thompson, C. (2021). The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community. (Chapter 9, “Inquire,” pp. 175-210). InterVarsity Press.

Images: Icons by the Russian iconographer Evgeni Kisets (1995) at the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, Jerusalem