Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
Intrigued by the presence of another, we want to know: Who are you? Our curiosity delves into the depths trying to know who another person is. They are mystery, an enigma creating a thrill deep within our hearts. We inquire, investigate, and explore trying to understand, apprehend, and most importantly appreciate the other. They add something to my life.
The word “Who” means another has value. He or she is a subject who expresses dignity, integrity, beauty. Looking beyond the physical, we want to know her heart, mind, and soul. She is a person. Another, who has ideas, feelings, and emotions. She suffers, experiencing rejection, ridicule, and persecution. She creates joy, happiness, and even holiness. Another person, unique, irreplaceable, matchless, offers me another universe to explore for she is a universe unto herself.
Today’s world sadly forgets that another is a “Who,” and treats her like an it, an object which does not feel, have emotions, nor suffer pains. She does not have intrinsic value. She is not an expression of love, goodness, truth, and beauty. She is an object, no different than a creature. She does not have an immortal soul, nor an intrinsic identity made in the image and likeness of God. Instead, she is useful. To be enjoyed, used, and once she is all used up to be discarded, treated like trash.
Everyone experiences such tragedy. Worse, everyone has treated another as an it, an object for our own gain. But when another person stops, looks into our eyes, and asks, Who are you? My life changes. The other sees me as a person. I have meaning, purpose, value, and most importantly the other sees in me a heart longing for love, a heart ready to love. Love, that unique ability by which we bond ourselves with another, we become friends, companions, even lovers: husband and wife.
Jesus does this. He identifies us as a person of inestimable treasure. He stops, listens, looks into our hearts affirming and accepting us not as an object, but as a person. He calls us his friends. We are his other self.
This interpersonal exchange creates a bond so powerful. It touches the very core of our being. We are recognized. We have an identity. We know we are loveable. We have meaning outside ourselves. Someone values us, and we have someone to value. No longer empty and objectified, we see ourselves as a subject, a person who lifts others up, but we too are lifted up. We transcend. We are made for something greater than ourselves. We, as Adam looking for another like himself, is incomplete. He is a half looking for the other who completes and amazingly perfects him. Deep within, we know we are incomplete, but now with Christ who calls us his friends, we are complete, whole, and fulfilled.
Yet, in the dialogue with his disciples, remember we are his disciples, Jesus does not ask, Who are you? Instead, He asks, “Who do you say I am?” Do we see Jesus as a person with feelings and emotions, pains and persecutions, rejected and ridiculed? Do we see Jesus as a friend who also needed help. Remember Jesus wept. He became angry. He fell. He suffered. He bled. He even died. Jesus was truly human; yet they treated Him as an it, a blasphemer, Who ought to be condemned. They could not accept Him as a person nor treat Him with respect. They made Him the object of their scorn. They crucified Him, dehumanizing Him as demonic.
Jesus not only experienced this scorn but predicted their actions. The Son of Man “must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Mt 16:21). Such prophetic speech became irreprehensible. NO! declares Peter! “This will never happen to you” (Matt 16:22). Yet, Jesus rebukes Peter, not because Peter does something wrong. Peter defends his friend. He honors the dignity and truth of Who Jesus is: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt 16:16). Jesus it not an it. He is a Person, human and divine.
Jesus, although completely human, is also totally God. He is consubstantial not only with humanity, made of the same substance, Jesus is consubstantial with the divine. He becomes man to divinize humanity.
Jesus rebukes Peter not because of his desire to honor his friend, but because his thinking imitates man’s ways, not God’s ways. The human mind cannot grasp the inscrutable, inexplicable, incomprehensible mind of God. St. Paul knew this and reminded us, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom 11:33). The God’s ways are not our ways, and our ways are not God’s. God’s ways are “higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is 55:9).
Asking Peter and his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” twists our thinking. We, too, see Jesus as man. He is born of a woman. He walks and talks, teaches and preaches; yet He walks on water. He talks about God as His Father. He teaches unlike the Scribes and Pharisees. He preaches a radically different message:
One will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom 5:7–8).
Do you experience the love Jesus has for you? He willingly died for us even though we were sinners. Humans don’t act like this. When someone does something wrong, we condemn. Jesus comes forgiving. Such a radical difference from our way of thinking.
We were not his friends. We were enemies of God, denying the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of God Himself, yet Jesus sees us a person, not an it. We, however, reduce God to an it when we sin. Yet, that does not impede God’s love. Treating Him as an object, Jesus treats us as his friend. Annulling Him, Jesus affirms us. Nothing will separate us from the love of Christ, except the one thing. We deny Him. We blaspheme, denying that we are sinners in need of a Savior.
Asking us “Who do you say that I am?” questions our intentions. It examines our consciences exposing our deepest thoughts. He wants to know if we will embrace his friendship. If we will acknowledge our need to be forgiven, our need to repent, so we may believe in Him. He is not just another prophet; He is the Prophet, the fulfillment of all the prophecies. He is the new Moses, the New Elisha, the New David, the New Solomon. He is the Anointed One of God foretold. In asking us, Who do you say I am? Can we respond with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt 16:16)? Can we change our way of thinking?
To declare Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, means we are blessed. God, his Father, is now our Father. We are no longer orphans, forsaken, desolate, but chosen. We become friends, bonded to the Father through the Son Who sends us his Spirit. In his Spirit, our lives change. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). In this newness of life, we offer our sins to Him so that He may crucify them upon the cross, cleansing and forgiving us.
Yet, to receive redemption, we acknowledge his authority. His authority to forgive comes from the cross, his witness to love. Incredibly, Jesus gives that authority to Peter.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt 16:19).
Jesus, Man and God, empowers man, Peter, to speak for God. Peter receives the power to govern, to prophesy, and most amazingly to forgive sins. Peter receives the Power from on High to be another Christ. This power does not come from his wanting it, but from the Spirit Who gives it. Just as Peter received the gift of faith to declare Jesus the Son of the Living God, so too, the Spirit gives Peter the keys of the Kingdom. He governs, prophesizes, and forgives. Not in his name, through the power of the Spirit.
As Jesus told us, the Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth (John 16:13). The Spirit protects Peter’s rule. What he says and does, when he speaks authoritatively: in the name of Church, comes not from him, but from the Spirit, “for the Father will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:15).
All that Jesus has is ours for the Father wants to give us everything He has. Far beyond friendship, the Father wants to give us his authority, even over sin. To receive such authority, we accept Jesus’ declaration. “I give you (Peter) the keys to the kingdom” (Matt 16:19). Peter receives the keys, he opens and shuts; he locks and unlocks. When I obey Peter’s authority knowing it came directly to him through Jesus, protected by the Spirit, then I too open and shut, lock and unlock the mysteries of the kingdom. My authority comes from Jesus, through Peter. Obedience to Peter is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the Kingdom.
Jesus builds his Church upon Peter’s confession of faith and when I confess in communion with Peter, I too have authority. Not of my own, but through the Church, Who is the body, the assembly, of Christ’s people. Belonging to the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, I know who I am? I am the Church, one with Christ, holy by Christ’s grace, universal throughout the world, and confessing with Peter and the apostles that Jesus is Messiah the Son of the Living God. this is who I am.
Peter and his successor receives from the Father everything to guide and govern the Church.