“Do you love me?” Christ asked Saint Peter not once, not twice, but three times, leaving the Apostle distressed, because Jesus, knowing all things, surely already knew His disciple’s love; Peter did not need to prove it, nor to convince Jesus it was true. The Savior’s question, though, was not for Himself, but for Peter, and for us.

We are called in this vocation “see the suffering Christ” in the poor. [Rule, Part I, 1.8] Not to imagine Him, but to truly feel His presence and to know that He is there. As St. Vincent explained, we “are serving Jesus Christ in the person of the poor. And that is as true as that we are here”. [CCD IX:199] When we visit the neighbor, when we encounter the needy, we are in the presence of the One who asks:

“Do you love me?”

As Saint Paul learned, simply answering “yes” is not enough. We are called to “love God,” in St. Vincent’s famous formulation, “with the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brows.” [CCD XI:32] Loving is not simply feeling, it is doing – not for ourselves but for the other. When our Catechism tells us to love our neighbor, that love is not separated from our love for God. On the contrary, we are called to love God “for his own sake” and to love the neighbor “for the love of God.” [CCC, 1822] Love of God and love of neighbor cannot be separated.

Indeed, as the Apostle John explains “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” We love the neighbor in part because we can see him – he is the hungry one, the thirsty one, the stranger, the prisoner, the sick. He is standing right over there, outside the window, shivering in the cold. He is calling our Conference helplines, again, and again, and again, testing our patience as each time we answer his call, he asks as if he does not already know:

“Do you love me?”

All the crazy things we do for the love of romance or of friendship; the sacrifices we make and the favors we do for our friends and family are never too much for them to ask of us. They don’t even have to ask because our love alone compels us. So, when Jesus asks Peter (and us) if we love Him, He reminds us gently what the love of God calls us to do: “Feed my lambs.”

Whatever we do for the least of these, we do for Christ Himself. Or, as Servant of God Dorothy Day once put it, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

Contemplate

Who do I love the least, and how can I love them more?

By Timothy Williams,
Senior Director of Formation & Leadership Development
Society of St. Vincent de Paul USA.