“How many times do we hear: 'Come on, you Christians, be a little bit
more normal, like other people, be reasonable!' This is real snake charmer's
talk: 'Come on, just be like this, okay? A little bit more normal, don't be so
rigid ...' But behind it is this: 'Don't come here with your stories, that God
became man!' The Incarnation of the Word, that is the scandal behind all of
this! We can do all the social work we want, and they will say: 'How great the
Church is, it does such good social work." But if we say that we are doing
it because those people are the flesh of Christ, then comes the scandal. And
that is the truth, that is the revelation of Jesus: that presence of Jesus
incarnate.” ― Pope Francis, Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the
Everyday
Gospel
Text: (MT 16:13-19)
When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea
Philippi
he asked his disciples,
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist,
others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I
am?”
Simon Peter said in reply,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God.”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you,
Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to
you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not
prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of
heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed
in heaven.”
Today we celebrate two of the great first
generation saints, Peter and Paul. There are many things that could be said of
them. I want to approach today’s reading a little differently by considering
the view of the world these men had.
Peter, whom Jesus in today’s Gospel passage entrusts
with the care of the Church, was very different than Paul. Peter’s personality
was rough and impatient. He was poor and uneducated. Now if Jesus had thought
as worldly people do, he never would have chosen Peter as the first pope.
Instead, he would have chosen someone like Paul, refined and educated.
Regardless of their differences, these two men
came to the same end: martyrdom for the Holy Name of Jesus. In the year 67,
Saint Peter was crucified upside-down in the circus of Nero, and buried nearby
in an out-of-the-way cemetery on a hill called the Vatican. Saint Paul, after
being held a prisoner in Rome for many years, was beheaded just outside the
walls of the city.
As with their Lord, these two men came to what
seemed to be shameful deaths. Unfortunately, unlike their Lord, there was no
report of Peter or Paul rising from the dead. They were simply failures. That’s
surely how they were sized up by many around them, both in the Roman Empire and
perhaps even among some members of the Church. What kind of foundation had they
laid for the Church?
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the
Roman Catholic Church, the church that spread from that city throughout the
world. Twenty centuries later, the Church certainly is universal, with more
than one billion members across the globe, but are we really any holier than
those first members of the Church? Are we willing to put our lives, or even our
names on the line for Christ?
Our spiritual lives are never a “done deal.”
They are always under construction. The Mass we share in is a continual source
of strength for us, as each week we struggle to be faithful disciples of Jesus.
Each day is a building block of faith, in which, by our daily sacrifices, we
build up others as well as our own spiritual lives.
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