Three times Peter denied that he knew Jesus. In today’s Gospel he is asked three times “Do you love me?“  Peter does not like being asked the question.  He thinks that he has already shown that he loves Jesus and he wonders why the Lord continues to ask him. Jesus answer to Peter’s affirmative response is that Peter should feed the lambs and the sheep.  Jesus does not tell Peter to join any particular group or obey any certain list of regulations.  Jesus does not ask Peter to conform to any particular set of rules. Jesus just tells him that if Peter loves Jesus and wants to follow in His footsteps Peter must be a person of charity who cares for the wants and needs of others. It is Jesus telling Peter again that if you want to love God you must also love those around you, particularly those who have no one else to care for them. Once again, Jesus teaches us that the key to being a Christian is to be a person of charity. Or as it  is said in the scripture what remains is faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love.

  Charity certainly goes beyond the romantic love or the love of material things that we hear about so much in our daily life. Charity involves going the extra mile for others even those we don’t particularly like or even to those who have hurt or injured us. Christian charity asks us over and over do you love me? We can be like Peter and get angry about the amount of times that God asks us to love or we can see that we are being asked to be like Jesus, who from the cross in the moment of His deepest passion and pain forgave those who had harmed Him. The choice is ours to make but the surety is that we will be asked to be men and women of charity and we will have to respond to the Lord’s call. We will need to avoid the temptation to say we have already given too much or we have been used in the past or our attempt to love was rejected. We will have to avoid the idea of justice and asking what the other person has done for us lately. We will be asked to say yes I love you and then answer the challenge to feed the sheep.

  It seems almost impossible but last Tuesday we had the final class day of religious education for this year. This week we will celebrate the year with a closing mass and ice cream social. What a great group we have here at Our Lady of Hope. Mary Witt is a dedicated and resourceful leader of our program who works many extra hours to ensure that our children get the best possible religious education. She is supported by an equally dedicated and talented group of catechists and support staff who do an excellent job with the kids.  There is a great deal of parental support in our program which is vital to the success of any religious education program and our young people who attend the classes have a positive and open attitude. It is a pleasure working with the whole group of people in the religious education family and I look forward to working with them again next year. For now thank you to all who gave of their time and talent to make the religious education program here at Our Lady of Hope one of the best around.

  Don’t forget to get those tickets for the Schaumburg Flyers on June 29^th. It should be a great evening for the parish to have some fun together. It is being sponsored by our Youth Group and our choir will be singing the National Anthem that night on the field. Get those ticket orders in soon.