My name is Don, and I’ve been a Catholic priest now for over 50 years, and during that time I keep going back to the same readings over and over again, only to discover that they contain something I never understood was there before. It gives me new enthusiasm and excitement for the message that keeps revealing itself, and I pray that the message that I’m sending you will be valuable. And if you find it so, please share these podcasts with your friends. Thank you. Good morning. Today we celebrate the third Sunday of Easter.

The opening prayer May your people exalt forever, O God, in renewed youthfulness of spirit, so that rejoicing now in the restored glory of our adoption, we may look forward in confident hope to the rejoicing of the Day of Resurrection, to our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, Holy One, God, forever and ever. Amen. A reading from the Acts of the apostles. Fifth chapter, 27th to the 32nd verse, and the 40th and 41st verse. When the captain and the court officials had brought the apostles in and made them stand before the Sanhedrin, the high priest questioned them. We gave you strict orders, did we, not, to stop teaching in that name.

Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and want to bring this man’s blood upon us. But Peter and the apostles said in reply, we must obey God rather than men. The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at the right hand as leader and Savior to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins. We are witnesses of these things, as is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. Sanhedrin ordered the apostles to stop speaking in the name of Jesus and dismiss them.

So they left the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they’d been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of his name. The Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. I will extol you, O Lord, for you drew me clear and did not let my enemies rejoice over me, O Lord, you brought me up from the netherworld, you preserved me from among those going down into the pit. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. Sing praise to the Lord, you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name for his angers last but a moment, a lifetime, his good will.

At nightfall weeping enters in, but with the dawn rejoicing. I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me. Dear O Lord, have pity on me. O Lord, be my helper. You changed my mourning into dancing. O Lord, my God, forever I will give you thanks.

A reading from the book of Revelations, fifth chapter 11 to the 14th verse. I, John, looked and heard the voices of many angels who surrounded the throne and the living creatures and the elders. They were countless in number. And they cried out in a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches with wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessings. Then I heard a creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe cried out to the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor, glory and might forever and ever. The four living creatures answered, Amen.

And the elders fell down and worshiped the word of the Lord. Alleluia verse Christ is risen, Creator of all. He has shown pity on all people. Hallelujah. The gospel for this third Sunday of Easter is taken from John 21st chapter first to the 19th verse. At that time, Jesus revealed Himself again to his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias.

He revealed Himself. In this together were Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two other of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, I am going fishing. They said to him, we will come and follow you. So they went out and got into the boat. But that night they caught nothing.

When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore. But the disciples did not recognize that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, children, have you caught anything to eat? They answered him, no. So he said to them, cast the net over the right side of the boat and you will find something. So they cast it and were not able to pull it in because the number of fish was so great.

The disciples, whom Jesus loved said to Peter, it is the Lord. When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tucked in his garment, for he was lightly clad and jumped into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat. They were not far from shore, only about a hundred yards, dragging the net with the fish. When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish you just caught.

So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of 153large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, come have breakfast. And then the disciples dared to ask him, who are you? Because they realized it was the Lord Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.

Now, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Simon Peter answered, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said, feed my lambs. He then said to Simon Peter a second time, simon, son of John, do you love me? Simon Peter answered him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, tend my sheep.

Jesus said to him, third time, simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was distressed that 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. Amen.

Amen. I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where. Where you do not want to go. He said this, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, Jesus said to him, follow me.

The Gospel of the Lord. Last Sunday, we began the journey of these men that came to know Jesus so intimately. They spent three years with him, and in all that time, they were struggling constantly with what they were taking in. They were listening to things that Jesus said. They watched him do miracles. They watched him do things that were extraordinary.

They watched also a direction that seemed to be creeping into their work. That is this awesome power of the temple resisting over and over again the teaching of Jesus. So I don’t know what those three years must have been like, but they must have been extraordinarily confusing, I think. And so what we’re now in is we’ve seen the fullness of the revelation of Jesus on Easter and the whole notion of what he had come to establish, a kingdom inside the hearts of human beings in a way that we could live out a life like Jesus lived. And the disciples were the ones called to be the first teachers of that life. And so, remember last week, it was Jesus coming to the disciples.

And where were they? They were terrified. They were locked in a room, and they were afraid of being destroyed by the same people that destroyed Jesus by the temple. And Jesus came into that fear and calmed it and talked to them about what he was wanting them to become and what he wanted them to do. And the biggest thing he wanted them to realize is There was nothing in Jesus that held anything against them, that all he felt for them was love and an anticipation and an excitement for what he was going to invite them into. They were moving from being disciples to becoming apostles.

What’s the difference? A disciple is a student, one who listens and integrates whatever they’re listening to and growing and changing. And then the word apostle means to be sent. So the apostle is the teacher. So these next few weeks we’re going to be looking at this incredibly interesting shift from a confusing, frightened part of the disciples life into this extraordinarily powerful, confident, apostolic mission. Okay, now one of the things I love about the responsorial psalms because they often fit very beautifully.

But there’s something in this response oil psalm that I really love. And that is it talks about the times when we might feel that God is angry at us. And we struggle with our failures and our disappointments. And yet we’re told over and over again that God is not a judge, but a helper, that he has care and intense desire to bring us into life. He has rescued us. I love that line.

He has rescued us. So let’s think about then the relationship that God has with the disciples. These come into their life to move them to a new level of understanding who they are and what they’re here for. And he’s calling them to be apostles and he’s appeared to them. Let’s just take it from the chronological way in which we’re listening to the gospels during this season of Easter. But he’s already proven to them that he’s not angry at them, not resentful to them, and he wants nothing other than to be with them and for them to know that he loves them.

And he gave them the most beautiful gift last Sunday when he said, I want you to understand forgiveness. When you forgive someone, their sin disappears. If you hold that sin against them, they live, live in shame and guilt. I don’t want you to live in shame and guilt. That’s the heart of the message of Jesus to these disciples who felt so bad that they weren’t able to be who they wanted to be for him. So now we have another beautiful experience for the disciples.

And don’t take these post resurrection experiences so literally. I mean, they do happen, don’t get me wrong. But you know the chronology of it. It’s all about these are the things happened to them in this process of growing and becoming who they were called to be. So they were first, they knew that this God loved them in spite of their Failures, and he forgave them. Now they find Jesus now being the instructor, so to speak, the main teacher, who’s saying, now I’m turning my work over to you.

So let’s look at this beautiful image of Jesus on the shore, inviting the disciples. And I love this image, inviting them to breakfast, the beginning of a workday breakfast. So they go out and they’re fishing, and they’re not being successful. So what I like to think about, when I think about that, I think about the times that we are called into a new life by God. Not necessarily a radical change of occupations, but perhaps a different perspective. And oftentimes the old perspective might have given us a certain sense of satisfaction.

It created something for us. But when we grow into something greater, something more, let’s say, designed to be a source of life for other people. Once you begin to experience that, the old job, the old work of maybe trying to be the best you can, doesn’t hold nearly its attraction. So they’re going back to their old work, and they’re going to see something about that work that is more about their new work than what it was in the past. And so Jesus is on the shore. He looks, he sees them.

They don’t recognize him as you just heard the story. And he gives them some advice. And the advice is to place your nets in a different place, shift your attention, go to this side over here where I’m telling you, it’s a different side of things. And so they do that, and, you know, they have this abundant abundance of success, and they bring all these fish ashore. And as soon as the miraculous sense of what is happening, you know, takes place, the one disciple that knew Jesus the best, even though no one recognized him before that moment, John says, oh, my God, it’s Jesus. And then Peter, the one who’s being called to lead the others, takes his leadership role, dives into the water and comes to Jesus.

And what they do, what does Jesus do for them, which I love? He sits them down and he said, let me feed you. Let me feed you. Now think how important this is as a symbol of what it is that God is asking these disciples to do through the words of Jesus. He’s saying, I want you to be my teachers. I want you to be the ones that establish this kingdom.

And I want you to go to different parts of the world. I want you to reach everyone eventually. But you know how the disciples did it. They spread out and they went to different churches and they began their teaching. And this is the moment when they were In a sense, commissioned to do that. And what the commission’s about is so essential.

I think when you listen to the images carefully, they’ll give you a real. They’ll give you a beautiful image of the heart, of what it means to be an apostle, a teacher. So the first thing that Jesus does after he feeds them, he calls Peter. And he says, peter, I want you to let me know something I want. Do you love me? Do you really understand who I am?

And do you understand that God is in me? And do you understand what the God that created you is doing for you? How he’s forgiven all your failures and he wants you to do something wonderful for him? Are you open to that? Do you love this message? Do you accept it?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And then he asked him to do something. And it’s the asking of what he’s wanting from Peter that I want you to pay close attention to. It’s the nature of what it means to be an apostle.

We’re all called to teach, to preach, and I love the words of St. Francis. When he told his disciples, he said, you know, you need to teach and preach constantly and only when necessary, use words. So what Peter is being challenged to do is to understand from the words of Jesus in this moment that there’s a ministry that’s so essential and so critical, and if he deviates from it, it will not work. And it’s in the questions he asks him. When he said, do.

Do you love me? Yes. Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to feed my lambs. And you know, when something’s repeated, you know, it’s really important. So he does it again.

Do you love me? Yes. Tend my sheep. He changed it. Not feed lambs, but tend sheep. And then he says, once again, do you love me?

And he said, tend my sheep. Now, what does that mean? Well, let’s first look at one of the things that’s interesting, is one is sheep and one is lambs. What’s a lamb? A lamb is a baby. A baby sheep.

So it’s like, I want you to go and bring this message to people who are children, who don’t understand it, whose minds are hopefully open, but they need to be taught. Children need to be shown things. They need to be taught what is what is the thing that Jesus came to give the world the truth. He’s the food of life. When you imagine the image of Eucharist, we just gone through that, through this whole wonderful Easter week, and we know that Jesus said, this is my body. Take it in.

I am with you. I am your nurturing life. And if you look at John’s gospel, what does he say? That nurturing quality of Jesus inside of you. It’s the truth incarnate. What is the truth?

To see the world as it is, who you are in it, who God is, why we’re here. That’s what an apostle needs to do to awaken people when they’re young, when they’re impressionable, and that doesn’t have anything to do with age, but when their heart is finally broken open and they want to know the truth, teach them. But then he changes it. He then says, do you love me? Yes. He says, well, tend my sheep.

Now, this is really important. Why is one feed with the truth and the other is tend? And what does it mean to tend? Well, if you look up in the Oxford English Dictionary, to tend means to pay attention to, to listen to, to bend your ear toward. What’s so beautiful about that is there’s one thing about bringing somebody into a new way of life. When you’re giving them direction and you’re asking them to try this new life and to live it as abundantly as they can.

And if you just give them that message and walk away from them, you’re not really an apostle. What you want to do is stay with them, tend them, pay attention to their struggles, to their weaknesses, to their need to be encouraged to facing their failures. It’s the most essential thing in any relationship if you want it to grow. You can share who you are with someone, they share who they are with you, and you find out about each other, and there’s knowledge in that. The truth of each of us comes through in a relationship, and you want the other to be basically there for you, and you want to be there for them. All of that’s important.

But if you’re not tending each other, listening to each other, paying attention to the. To what’s below the surface, you can’t be a good teacher. And then he does, goes back in. The third question says, but feed my sheep. So he’s saying, feed them when they’re young, tend them as they’re growing, and then continue. If you’re tending them well, you can continue to add new insight after new insight, and they will understand and they will grow.

What an incredible promise. That’s the challenge of not only being an apostle, but that’s the challenge of being in a role that God wants us to be in and to receive it. Tending. There’s a moment in the garden Gethsemane that I just want to mention really quickly. And it was when the soldiers from the temple came and Jesus was there and someone they were going to take Jesus and then one of the disciples cut off one of the ears of the people from the temple. And one of the things that’s so interesting about that is it might have been a sign that the temple was notorious for not listening, not tending, not caring.

And nothing is further from the one the church that God wants for us to teach and to learn about. Amen. The Closing Prayer Father, your longing, your desire is to open us to all that you have revealed to us through your life on this planet. And we have a hard time so often discerning it all. But what we need to keep remembering is your desire was not just fulfilled in any way, shape or form through the Scriptures, but it’s your desire to be in our life now, feeding us with information, feeding us with insight, and tending us so that we continue to grow without fearing our mistakes and fearing our weaknesses. Bless us with this food and this care, for it is our inheritance and without it we are lost.

And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. The music in this program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner. I’m excited for the opportunity to awaken your spiritual journey. If you enjoy this program, please subscribe and share it with a friend. This ministry also needs your support, so make a one time or recurring tax deductible donation on our website. Thank you so much for your listenership and your continued support.

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