Fr. Ephraim Panaousis
After His Resurrection, Christ approached Peter and asked him three times:
“Do you love Me more than these?” (John 21:15)
There was a deep wound in Peter's heart. Despite all the assurances he had given the Lord that he would never deny Him, he had nevertheless fallen into denial.
"Even if all fall away because of You, I will never fall away."
Yet this very attempt to distinguish himself from the others ultimately isolated him and led him to become the one who denied his Master.
Peter wept bitterly. He had washed his soul in a lake of tears, and now he longed to know whether the Lord had truly forgiven him.
After His Resurrection, Christ instructed the Myrrh-bearing women:
"Go and tell My disciples—and Peter—that I have risen."
This tender phrase revealed that the Lord held nothing against Peter. And now, standing before him once again, Christ asks him about the purity of his love.
"Do you love Me more than these?"
This question is not addressed only to Peter. It is directed to each one of us, like a sharp two-edged sword.
The Lord asks us:
Do you love Me more than anything else? Do you love Me above all? More than yourself? Have you allowed other loves to steal your heart away from Me?
He asks every one of us.
He asks me as well.
What do you love more than Me?
Ask yourself this question.
Answer it honestly. There is nowhere to hide. It is only you and the truth about your heart.
Can you bear that truth?
The answer, if I am sincere, is painful.
Yes, I love many things more than Him.
I have given my heart to ideas, to human creations, to strangers and to those closest to me, to things both trivial and precious, to passions—and, above all, to myself.
Every fragment of my heart that I give elsewhere is a fragment withheld from the One to whom it truly belongs.
And then, when the things I have loved so intensely fail to satisfy me, I experience deep disappointment.
Once again Christ asks:
"Do you love Me more than these?"
But why does He ask, when He already knows the answer?
Perhaps He asks so that I may question my own soul and come to recognize the truth.
Perhaps He asks so that I may finally stand alone, without earthly supports, leaning only upon Him.
For only when Christ becomes our first and greatest love does every other love find its proper place.
