The 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 3, 2023

Matthew 16, 21–27

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”

St. Matthew presents the episode in today’s Gospel Reading as coming directly after the events of the preceding verses in which St. Peter made his great confession of faith in Jesus as the Son of God, after which Jesus declared that he would build his Church on the Apostle.  However, we know from examples such as Matthew 3, 1, when Matthew writes “In those days, etc.” just after describing the Birth of the Lord, that often some time time passes between the events he relates to us.  This would seem to be the case in the present Reading.  Thus, Jesus announces that Peter has received a revelation from the Father and that his name is no longer Simon son of Jonah but Peter (Rock).  Then he leads them on to another town to preach.  Some time later, the Lord begins to teach the Apostles about his coming Passion and Death, at which Peter reacts strongly.  Knowing that these are two separate events and not one single event helps us to avoid confusion regarding the Lord’s praising Peter and then, scarcely minutes later, calling him “Satan”.

“Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  He tells them ahead of time so that they are not caught by surprise.  Even though he tells them of this more than once before his arrest, they panic when it happens.  The fact that they do keep together in the house at Jerusalem may be do the fact that they remembered his foreseeing this for them so that they might wonder what would come next.  We see in the Lord’s words that he gives a graphic description of what will happen to him.  This flies in the face of their expectation that when he goes to Jerusalem, it will be in order to inaugurate the restored Kingdom of Israel.  This leads to Peter’s exclamation, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”  Peter may see the Lord’s words as a test to see who will defend him.  He does see that his fate is completely bound up with that of his Lord and he cannot allow anything of what he says happen to him.  It is possible that Peter may see the Lord’s words as indicating his discouragement, and so he lends him encouragement.

“Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  What Peter does not yet understand is that the Lord’s Death will set humanity free from death, and that the Lord so loves us that he is on fire to die for us.  He cannot wait to do this: “And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?” (Luke 12, 50).  And so for Jesus, Peter becomes a “Satan” who opposes (Satan meaning “accuser” or “adversary”) his will to die on the Cross for the redemption he desperately wants for us.  Only after the Resurrection will the Apostles begin to understand what the Lord does for us in his Passion and Death because they are so wrapped up in their earthly messianic dreams until then.

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  Just as Jesus joyously embraces the Cross that will lead to our redemption, so we should also joyfully embrace the sufferings that come to us as a result of doing his will.  In doing so, we perform the share of the Lord’s work.  “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  We give up our personal ambitions and pleasures in this world in order to follow along the way of the Lord by which we find eternal life.  “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”  “To gain the world”: to attain all one’s earthly goals and ambitions, even at the cost of one’s faith.

“Or what can one give in exchange for his life?”  That is, what can a person give in order to have life in heaven?  Would not all that a person has seem too little to purchase it?  St. Paul: “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3, 8).  “For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay all according to his conduct.”  If we lose our lives in this world, turning away from ambitions and possessions to do only the will of God whatever it means and wherever it takes us, the. The Lord will “repay” us in eternal currency.