Thursday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 16, 2023

Mark 8, 27-33

Jesus and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Along the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They said in reply, “John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Christ.” Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him. He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

To those who come to our weekly Bible Study, I’m sorry to have missed you.  I was extremely sick in the beginning at an hour before we were to meet, and I have been weak all day since.  With the help of your prayers, I will see you this coming Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

City of Caesarea Philippi was built in a lush, fertile area watered by the springs that fed the Jordan.  At the time our Lord walked the earth, it had become a center of pagan worship.  Twenty-five miles beyond the border with Galilee, numerous temples fostered the worship of the Greek god Pan and those gods associated with him.  Pan, whose lower half was that of a goat, was a god of shepherds.  He was known and celebrated for his lascivious behavior.  He knew no morality and could be seen as a symbol of our present age.  To this pagan city the Lord led his disciples, and it was there, in the face of the worship of Pan, that he declared that he would build his Church on St. Peter (cf. Matthew 16, 18).  That Mark does not recount this vital detail here may be because Peter, from whose preaching he derived his Gospel, did not mention it out of the sense of his own unworthiness, a trait he always seems to have possessed: “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5, 8).  The Lord made this announcement on Gentile territory, not on that of the Jews, signifying that his Church would include both Jews and Gentiles — and also that he was not beholden to the authorities in Jerusalem.  He makes his announcement as a sort of declaration of war against the rule of the devil over the world.  

“Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.”  “Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Messiah”.  The Lord wanted the Apostles to know this because they were open to learning what the term meant to him.  For the Jews and especially for their leaders, the term meant something very specific, which they had defined for themselves without the guidance of a prophet or even a properly appointed high priest.  The Lord would finally reveal himself to them during his interrogation before the Sanhedrin.

But he did speak openly that “the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days.”  This ran completely contrary to what the Pharisees taught about the Son of Man, and, indeed.  In fact, to be rejected by the elders meant that any following that he had would exist outside of Judaism.  Whatever awe the Apostles felt upon hearing that he was indeed the Messiah melted away quickly with this subsequent announcement.  Peter, in fact, seemed to think that he was testing them.  “Get me behind me, Satan” shows something of the vehemence of the Lord’s desire to die for our salvation.  But the Lord is not calling Peter “Satan”, but revealing that the devil, suspecting more and more who the Lord actually was, was starting to plan ways to keep the Lord from dying in this way, or, failing that, to cause him to suffer so greatly that he would revel from God’s plan and save himself, as we hear the guards and the Sanhedrin urging him to do on Calvary.