NOTES for Joh 21:21-22

This may be the unique quality of our faith. It rests not on fulfilling certain laws, not on a shared ritual, though it rests on both, but most of all on deeply personal communion between me and the Lord. The Lord and I. Not someone else, even the best friend and brother in faith, but only He and I. And although Judaism is a very normative religion, the roots of this unfathomably deep intimate communion still go back precisely to the Old Testament. Let us recall: what is man, that You are mindful of him, and the son of man, that You visit him? (Ps 8:5) The image of the Lord coming to tell a person something about himself, about how he should live, is a unique revelation of God's nearness; it is both difficult and necessary. Difficult, because one must learn to listen, and necessary, because without this there is no life. In the Third Book of Kings there is a story about a man of God (3 Kgs 13:11-32). What caused the death of the man of God? After all, he died because he listened to the old prophet, who sincerely wished him well and respected him so much that he even ordered himself to be buried beside him. But the man of God turned away from what the Lord had said personally to him, looking instead at what had been said to someone else, even though that someone was a prophet. We must trust very deeply what we hear not with the ear, but with the heart.

Having heard about his coming martyr's death, Peter immediately asks Christ about the evangelist John. As a future shepherd concerned for the future of those entrusted to him, the chief apostle is worried about the fate of the young disciple. But in these words one can see not only care and concern, but also simple curiosity. Peter wants to look into the future, to know whether Jesus predicts a violent death for all His followers. And to this the Lord answers him rather sharply: "what is that to you." And at once He adds: "you follow Me."

At times we greatly want the path and the heart of our neighbor to be opened before us, for those hidden things that happen between him and God to be shown to us. And we are not always moved by curiosity; often it is our human concern and sympathy. But Christ calls each person to follow Him, expecting complete trust from us. Because we can follow Jesus only if we bring Him those who are in our heart.

Does it happen that someone fails to notice our good deeds and actions, our sacrifice? Yes, in general, quite often, if we are in fact doing those good deeds. And what reaction arises first? Despondency, annoyance, the desire to say that you will not do anything anymore. We lose patience and, at best, become sad.

The same thing can be projected onto our relationship with God. Quite often we wait for some confirmation of our thoughts and actions, for a reward for an uneaten piece of sausage or some other ascetic "feat." But God does not always answer immediately. And our reactions to His silence are generally similar to resentment at the inattentiveness of those close to us.

But the Lord leaves nothing unnoticed; He sees both what is secret and what is open (see Matt. 6:4). In addition, Jesus speaks wondrous words: the Lord, having been glorified in someone, will glorify that person in Himself. God simply has His own view of our human time, and only He knows when someone needs encouragement and when instruction is needed, giving that person a chance to stand "on his own two feet." The Lord will forget nothing done in His name, and He will receive the one who did it in His Kingdom (see Matt. 25:31-40).

How familiar and understandable this is. How we love to ask God questions whose answers do not concern us at all. But here is what is comforting: the apostle Peter also asked foolish questions—and nothing terrible happened. Jesus tells him: “Peter, My relationship with John is a matter between him and Me. What matters to you is your relationship with Me. You follow Me.” He says the same thing to each of us. He does not answer a question that should not have been asked, yet He does not reject the person who asked it. A “foolish question” does not mean the end of the conversation. The Lord merely guides Peter—and with him each one of us—back into the right channel.

It is interesting that Peter and John are in some way especially connected through certain Gospel events. In today's passage we see the same straightforward Peter, who does not delay with questions and does not hide his thoughts. It is quite possible that all the disciples had a caring attitude toward John as the youngest. Here that care is shown in a direct question about the future fate of the "younger brother": "Lord, what about this man?" (John 21:21). And here we remember John's own question about who would betray Jesus, since it was asked at Peter's request. See John 13:23-25)…

And what do we hear in response? "If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?" (John 21:22). The Lord gives an answer, though perhaps with a slight rebuke to Peter's curiosity. And people immediately try to interpret this answer in order to understand exactly what Jesus meant.

Such is our human problem: "I want to know everything" and understand everything, often regardless of whether it concerns us at all. How often one encounters heightened interest in horoscopes, dream interpretation, and predictions of the future. The same also includes the stubborn desire to interpret every word of the Book of Revelation... But John himself emphasizes that Jesus said nothing more than these few words. And it is not always necessary to tear the thin veil from something whose time has not yet come...

Christ's conversation with Peter by the Sea of Tiberias is a constant subject of discussion between Eastern and Western Christians in connection with the so-called primacy of Peter and his successors. In reality, this dispute is resolved internally, and there is no point discussing that here. In practice, something else is far more important. After Peter's denial, after the risen Christ's meetings with the apostles, after the Lord tells the myrrh-bearing women, "tell My brothers, and Peter," specifically calling Peter to become a witness of the resurrection, after all this a new moment arrives in their relationship. This is the moment of Peter's forgiveness and complete healing. It is the moment of Peter's new calling to the way of the Cross. From this moment on, the weight of the denial no longer hangs over Peter in any way.

What is needed for this? What does Christ ask of him? Whether Peter is ready to be a zealous keeper of the commandments? No. Whether Peter is ready for feats of asceticism and self-restraint? No. Whether Peter is ready to build the Church and carry out Christ's commission? No; that will come later in this dialogue. The Lord asks about only one thing: "Do you love Me?" This matters because both our relationship with Christ and the fate and life of each of us depend only on the answer to this question and on what we embody that answer in. Everything else is detail.

Peter and John. The two who did not run away from Gethsemane that night, as all the others did. It is no accident that Jesus addresses Peter first. Or perhaps only him. In any case, the evangelist says nothing about whether Jesus asked questions of the other disciples at that meeting. But He asked Peter: do you love Me? And He asked him again three times. It was as if He were bringing Peter back there, to the temple courtyard, where he had denied three times that he knew Jesus. Only him. If we stay within what the evangelist says, He asked no one else anything. And that is understandable: what was there to ask those who had run away? They are not lost causes, no. On the contrary, everything still lies ahead for them. They have not even begun their path yet.

But Peter had begun. He took the first step when he followed Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, at a time when he himself no longer hoped for anything, just like all the others. This is the first step: realizing the self-sufficient value of relationship with Christ. And Jesus evaluates Peter's denial in the temple courtyard from the height of this first step that Peter had taken. For it was precisely then, in that very courtyard, that he began to become His true disciple. And he almost broke. He did not become a traitor. What set things right was that Peter came to himself at once: the rooster's crow sounded like an alarm bell.

But the break was close, very close. And Jesus asks Peter a question: so then, do you love Me more than these? How did you live through that situation in the temple courtyard? Did you break, or did you hold firm? Those deeply personal relationships with Me, dependent on nothing else - what happened to them? Did they remain? Or have you become like all My other disciples, and now you have to start everything from the beginning, as they do? Of course, Jesus Himself sees everything perfectly. "Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You."

He, Jesus, of course knows. But He needs Peter to understand himself too. He needs Peter to say to himself what he has just said to Him. So that it becomes clear: he, Peter, is one step ahead of the others. And if so, then, "feed My sheep." Not because he is higher, but because he has stepped forward. He dared, in his relationship with the Teacher, to do what the others did not dare to do. This is how people become true shepherds and presiders in the Church of Christ. And John? He did not run away then either... "What is that to you? You follow Me." You have your path, and he has his. Walk your own path. Follow Me. Your brother will walk his own. We will all meet in My Kingdom.

One of the favorite themes of Christian preachers is the story of Peter's threefold denial and the question the risen Jesus repeated three times: "Do you love Me?" Commentators often pay attention to the shades of meaning in the word "love," which in the Greek text is conveyed by two different words, sometimes drawing far-reaching conclusions from the nuances of Greek usage. Yet such nuances could hardly have played so large a role in Jesus' dialogue with Peter: after all, they were certainly not speaking Greek, but most probably Aramaic; and in Aramaic, unlike Greek, such nuances are absent.

But the threefold question and the threefold answer do have their meaning in Jewish tradition: testimony or an oath repeated three times is considered definitively established. Apparently, this custom is connected with features of the national temperament: who knows what may slip off the tongue in the heat of the moment! But if a person repeats something three times, if he answers the same question the same way three times, then the answer is no longer given in the heat of the moment; the one answering really thinks as he says, and his answer can be considered firm and final.

Of course, when answering Jesus, Peter could not fail to understand why the Teacher asked him the same question three times. He, of course, could not fail to remember his threefold denial of Jesus, even if at that moment it had not been fully conscious. And both of them understood perfectly well that this denial had nevertheless not been fully conscious, but involuntary, that it happened in a situation Peter himself did not fully understand, and that it was threefold only outwardly: for all three times Peter, in essence, did not even think about the meaning of the question, but simply brushed off the questioners so they would not keep him from following what was happening to his Teacher. And Jesus evidently wants from him a threefold, almost formal oath of love for Himself. And Peter becomes bitter and pained, like a person who understands that after what happened the Teacher can no longer trust him as before.

And Jesus immediately explains His questions: Peter has ahead of him a new, important, and responsible ministry, which will end in the same way as the earthly ministry of his Teacher ended. The question was not asked for no reason: Peter himself needed the answer. A man whose apostolic ministry began with involuntary apostasy and ended with the martyr's death of a faithful witness.

What made the beloved disciple recognize the One who stood on the shore in the morning mist? After the Resurrection Christ is not bound to any particular appearance or place, and so the disciples do not recognize Him, just as Mary Magdalene, who came to the tomb in the morning, did not recognize Him at first. As for us, we do not know at all what He looked like, what His gaze or voice was like; in this we resemble the seven disciples, for whom the Man on the shore is no different from all the others.

But for the disciple "whom Jesus loved," that is, the one who himself loved Him more than anyone else did, the combination of a familiar episode (they had once already fished with Him; see Luke 5:4-9) and the special sensitivity that lets one recognize those one loves made it possible to recognize the Teacher. And what was possible for one disciple is possible for the others, and for us, thousands of years later.