Matthew 16:13 - 20
Do you believe in hell? Do you believe that God sent his only Son precisely to make it possible for us to avoid hell and gain eternal life? Do you believe the Church has what you need to gain eternal life, or to put it another way, the Church is the ordinary means by which human beings can access the gift God gives us through Jesus? (Notice, I said “ordinary” means because the Church also teaches that God in his mercy makes the gift of Jesus available to people who are sincerely trying to live decent lives but have not been given the gift of faith.) The reason I bring these questions up is because probably most American Catholics don’t believe one or more of those statements. I mean, would a good God send me to hell? And really, is Jesus the only way to get to heaven? And the Church? Don’t get me started! And besides, I know protestants and Jews and even atheists who are holier than the average Catholic. But the questions I asked are doctrine; we can find their answers in scripture and in the teachings of the Church and we assent to them every time we say the Creed. It’s important to us Catholics to now and then ask, are we properly using what God has given us to save our souls? Because he doesn’t send us to hell, but he loves us so much that if we choose not to return that love by how we live, we can send ourselves there.
The real question is what Jesus asked: Who do people say that I am? Because Moslems revere Jesus as a prophet. Jews who think about it agree that he is a holy man. Most people who know something about Jesus, other than those who have decided there was no such person, would have some opinion, usually favorable. And before Jesus puts the apostles on the spot, he asks them what the word on the street is, and with relief, they tell him. And then he springs the question: Who do you say that I am? And they look around nervously trying not to make eye contact with Jesus. Finally Peter blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Notice that Jesus does not say, “Nice going, Pete, you figured it out!” He says, “Blessed are you because God told you who I am!” Faith is a gift; people who are baptized, even as infants, have been given this gift. Of course it’s obvious that we can throw away that gift. Some of our children do; sometimes a spouse does. We all have friends and relatives who used to be Catholic. But every now and then we see evidence that the spirit is still at work and we see someone come into the Church as an adult, or we see a young person go from indifferent to committed. The gift is like a garden which needs to be weeded and watered with prayer and study.
Peter is proclaimed blessed by Jesus, and given that wonderful promise that he will be the rock on which the Church will be built, and that what is bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven. Peter must have felt very important at that point, enough so that he felt bold enough to try to correct Jesus when.he talks about having to suffer and die. Jesus rebukes him, calls him “satan”. And that is the lesson for you and I.
If we think Jesus is just another prophet or holy man, and that there is no hell, and that the Catholic Church is just another way to get to heaven, we’ve missed the point. But if we agree that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, we may have still missed the point, as Peter did. Because we still have to answer the question, what kind of Messiah is Jesus to me? And Peter might answer -- the one who healed my mother-in-law; the one who told me to walk on water, and I did, for a minute; the one who left me nearly speechless on the mountaintop when he appeared with Moses and Elijah; the one who predicted that I would betray him; the one who spoke to me with mercy and forgiveness on the shores of the lake after he rose from the dead; the one that I in the end would give up my life for. Because Peter never did figure out who Jesus was to him; what kind of Messiah Jesus was; Peter was still figuring it out when he was martyred. And that’s our situation as well; we have to realize that while we can intellectually agree that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, we are always learning more about what kind of Messiah he is to you, to me. We in fact can never give a final answer, and if we think we can, we are no longer moving forward.
And if we are Catholic Christians, our Church is always revealing Christ to us -- because Jesus built his church on Peter’s recognition of who Jesus was to Peter -- a realization that only began with this famous confession.
Our job, as was true for Peter, is to learn God’s ways rather than the ways of man. God reveals to us his way in the Church Jesus founded and our task is to continue all through our lives learning God’s ways and rejecting those of man. In our lifetimes we will always be asking who Jesus is to me, we will always be seeking the answer as Peter did. And if we aren’t doing that, we aren’t moving forward in our spiritual growth.
