Agapas me?

I cannot study for my impending examinations anymore. So, while waiting for the right time to leave for Mass, I thought I might resume my writing. My apologies that this blog has been quite barren for the last few months. Med School, like the tempest that it is has completely engulfed me in a tsunami. All these fatal watery allusions should also allude to you, my dear reader, my desperate need of prayers! I would be most grateful if you would stop and say a short prayer to St Joseph Cupertino, the patron of students taking exams, and St Giuseppe Moscati, the patron saint of doctors, for me.

There are two kinds of conversions. The ones that happen to St Paul, like a flash of lightning. Where one is thrown off one's horse and immediately realises God, and makes the appropriate response: to love Him completely without turning back.

Then, there are the type of conversions that happen to St Peter. Slow, and gradual, and they continue on for the rest of one's life. Unlike St Paul, who was a great intellectual and of strong character, St Peter was not so bright, impulsive, headstrong, intense, and cowardly. Which is why I relate quite a bit to the first pope.

How often have I found myself, upon hearing my Lord speak, ask, 'Quod vadis Domine?' (Where are you going, O Lord?), and upon hearing the answer that I, like St Peter, not yet completely ready, to blurt out, 'Quare non possum te sequi modo? animam meam pro te ponam.' (Why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.') Though of course, St Peter, in all his impulsiveness, loved our Lord completely with all his being. He really meant it at that time, and I hope that I do to.

And yet, sooner or later, one finds himself, as did the Holy Father, to have fallen into mortal sin. To have denied Christ. For that is what a mortal sin is, to choose, for whatever moment, to deny any truth about God. That His love is not enough, or that His promises are not true, or to deny Him, as Simon Peter did, completely.

And later on, one creeps back into the confessional, with contrition, into the arms of the Lord, as He stands by the fire, reminding us of what we have done, as He did St Peter. And He asks, 'Do you, Agape me?' Do you love me with a complete, unconditional and sacrificial divine love?

To which one replies, 'Lord, you know that I Philio you', That I love you with the imperfect, emotional human love. As like St Peter, desiring fully to love the Lord, but fearing to fall again into that dreaded trap of denial, because we are still attached to the world.

And again He asks again, 'Do you, Agape me?'

And again one replies, 'I Philio you.'

And finally He accepts, and asks, 'do you Philio me?'

And we are disappointed, like St Peter, and reaffirm, 'yes, I Philio you.'

The Lord accepts this, because at that time, He knows that is all that one can give, He lets us carry a cross that is always heavy to us, but never more than we can bear. However, He will not accept philio from us forever, He will continue to pursue us throughout our lives, asking us, as he did the rich man, to abandon all the world and follow Him, to follow Him home.

And so I hope, that one day too, I will, in a similar way to St Peter, meet the Lord on the road, weak as I am and running away again. And I will ask, 'Quo vadis Domine?'

And He will ask me, 'do you Agape me?'

And I can finally, with the grace of God, say, 'Yes Lord, I Agape you.', and never turn back.

And finally, He will say, 'come, follow me home.'