Do You Love Me?

Peter was distressed that he [Jesus] 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.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” – John 21:17

“Do you love me?” It’s the question of every human heart. I believe it’s the deepest question we have in all our relationships. We subconsciously and silently ask it of our parents, friends, spouse, and children: “Do you love me?” And they wonder the same of us. Sometimes if you pay attention their eyes seem to ask, “Do you love me?”

Sometimes we even wonder if God truly loves us. We can be discouraged by our imperfections and wrongly doubt if God can love us despite our flaws. We can be free to love God with everything we’ve got, because He will always love us perfectly in return. Our human relationships will always be lacking in some way, but God the Father will never let us down. He loves us and proved it by sending His Son Jesus to teach us, love us, and die for us.

Jesus loves us in a very special way: with a heart that is both divine and human. Jesus has two natures; He is fully God and fully man. So He can love us with both dimensions of His person. Pope Francis wrote about Christ’s tangible human and divine love for us. At the bottom I included a few of his beautiful reflections on Christ’s Sacred Heart from his encyclical, Dilexit Nos, He Loved Us.

In this Sunday’s Gospel passage, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Notice that after each affirmative answer, Jesus directs Peter what to do as a result of his love of God: love and serve others. Jesus tells Peter to feed his flock (sheep/lambs). And that’s precisely what Peter does through his priestly office of consecrating the Eucharist. His successors, today’s priests, feed us with the Eucharist, the perfect love of Christ made flesh.

One idea to live out the Gospel this week is to think of one or two concrete ways you can show your love of God by loving others. You can enter into imaginative prayer by hearing Jesus ask you, “Do you love me?” After you respond, listen to see how Jesus directs you in some specific act of love for Him. How will you feed His lambs this week?

Jesus, you know everything. You know I love you. I am so thankful that you give me the power to do the loving things You ask me to do for others, especially through the Eucharist.

Quotes from Pope Francis in Dilexit Nos:

• “Let us turn, then, to the heart of Christ, that core of his being, which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfilment to which humanity can aspire. There, in that heart, we truly come at last to know ourselves and we learn how to love.” (2)
• “The eternal Son of God, in his utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love.” (60)
• ” In gazing upon the Lord’s [Sacred] heart, we contemplate a physical reality, his human flesh, which enables him to possess genuine human emotions and feelings, like ourselves, albeit fully transformed by his divine love. Our devotion must ascend to the infinite love of the Person of the Son of God, yet we need to keep in mind that his divine love is inseparable from his human love.” (60)
• “Entering into the heart of Christ, we feel loved by a human heart filled with affections and emotions like our own. Jesus’ human will freely choose to love us, and that spiritual love is flooded with grace and charity.” (67)
• “…in the Eucharist the merciful and ever-present love of the heart of Christ invites us to union with him.” (84)
• “The pierced heart of Christ embodies all God’s declarations of love present in the Scriptures. That love is no mere matter of words; rather, the open side of his Son is a source of life for those whom he loves, the fount that quenches the thirst of his people.” (101)