Friday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time, August 28, 2026

The Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo

Matthew 25:1-13

Jesus told his disciples this parable: “The Kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones, when taking their lamps, brought no oil with them, but the wise brought flasks of oil with their lamps. Since the bridegroom was long delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight, there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise ones replied, ‘No, for there may not be enough for us and you. Go instead to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.’ While they went off to buy it, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went into the wedding feast with him. Then the door was locked. Afterwards the other virgins came and said, ‘Lord, Lord, open the door for us!’ But he said in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Throughout the New Testament we find the Kingdom of heaven likened to a  Jewish wedding feast, beginning with the words of St. John the Baptist: “He that has the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled” (John 3, 29).  St. Paul speaks likewise: “I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11, 2).  Finally, at the end of the Book of Revelation, we read of the vision revealed to St. John in which the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven, adorned like a bride for her groom (cf. Revelation 21, 2).  We learn from these references that marriage serves as the primary image for the union of Christ and his Church.  The Lord himself shows this in various parables.  In the parable from today’s Gospel, we see how he uses the marriage feast to teach about the need for perseverance in faith in the life of his disciples.

The context of the parable is the return from the house of the bride’s family.  The groom brings her to his house so that they might begin their life together.  As part of this ritualized action, ten virgins, that is, girls in their early teens, would wait for the bride and groom outside the house and light the way for them until they went inside.  It was quite an honor to be chosen for this role, just as being chosen as a member of a wedding party would be for people today.  Now, five of the girls are described as being “wise”.  The Greek word actually means “practical”, “shrewd”, “sensible”, “prudent”, and “well-behaved”.  These girls realized that they were called to this role in order to fulfill a simple purpose, and so they procured that which would enable them to accomplish this.  They saw they were called to serve.  The other five girls are called “foolish”, and the Greek word is the basis for our word “moron”.  The Greek word has the meaning of “being dull”, “stupid”, “mentally inert”.  These virgins do not appreciate their role and do not prepare for it.  Even if they had not acted in this role for previous marriage feasts, what was necessary to carry it out would have been widely known.  In fact, they act with contempt towards the bridegroom and his bride.

The prudent virgins are those believers who light the way for Christ as he brings his Church into heaven at the end of time.  These are the saints, the Apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and married people who have brightened the world below with the light of their faith and holiness.  Their lit lamps are their good works, and the oil is the faith which fuels these good works.  They have sufficient faith no matter how long they must wait for the Lord to come, for they have prayed for it to be strengthened, and they have increased it through witnessing it to others.  The foolish virgins showed up with lamps, but they did not do these things, as though the role itself were repugnant to them, or the bride and bridegroom were contemptible to them.  That they run to buy oil when it is already too late shows only that they wish to not be left outside but to join the party within.  They do not care for the host and hostess, only for themselves.  The groom’s words, “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you”, repeat back to the foolish virgins in words what they have said to him with their actions. 

Jesus says to us, and not for the first time, “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”  It is necessary for us to take stock of our own situations and to see if we have what we need for when the Lord comes again, for he surely will.

We celebrate today the feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the two great theologians since the Apostles who have shaped the Catholic Faith.  His two best known works are his Confessions and The City of God, but he also wrote hundreds of relatively short sermons that are filled with insights on the Scriptures and the life of our Lord.  Much of this is online.  We ask for his intercession that he may instill in our hearts a great love of the Lord Jesus and his holy words.

Thursday in the Twenty-First Week of Ordinary Time

The Feast of St. Monica

Matthew 24:42-51

Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Throughout his Gospel, St. Matthew records very many instances of the Lord Jesus teaching about the coming judgment at the end of the world.  Doing so enabled Matthew to console the persecuted Jewish Christians for whom he was writing.  In Matthew’s Gospel more than the others, we see the wicked, often thinly disguised Pharisees, scribes, and the leadership in Jerusalem — their persecutors — being punished severely while the faithful are rewarded.  The Gospel reading for today is taken from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.  Chapters twenty-four and twenty-five contain the last public addresses of the Lord before his Passion begins and so they constitute a farewell speech.  He does not address large crowds again.  His last words to the crowds are about the second coming, and the next time large crowds see him will be at his second coming.

The reading is cut out from the middle of the Lord’s words on his coming again for judgment, and the context is his reason for people to live in  expectation of it.  In the Greek text, this reading is connected to those words with oun, which means “therefore”.  The Greek verb here is gregoreíte, which does not mean “stay awake” but “be on the alert”, or, “keep watch”.  The difference is significant.  A person can be awake but unaware.  Jesus is telling people to stay on their toes, to keep alert, “for you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”  We might ask why it is necessary for us to keep alert, since the Lord will certainly come again whether we are paying attention or not.  Foreseeing this question, Jesus speaks in a parable: “If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.”  We can understand this in two ways.  First, that Jesus is the thief who comes while everyone is asleep, sure of their safety.  But complacency is not real safety and if the thief comes and is able to break in, the sleepers will lose everything.  They could protect themselves with good works, and these would act as “the master of the house” keeping watch at night.  Second, it can be understood as the devil seeking to steal away a person’s faith, since faith can also be lost through complacency.

The moral Jesus gives here, “So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come”, he repeats several times in this section in the same way as he repeats “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you” over and over again as recorded the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel.  We must live holy lives today as though our souls will be demanded of us tonight (cf. Luke 12, 20).

“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.”  The servant “put in charge of his household” — the master’s household — is the disciple of Christ who “distributes to them their food”, that is, feeds others the Gospel, “at the proper time”, doing so prudently and skillfully.  “Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.”  This servant is “blessed” in the sense that he is praiseworthy and also in the spiritual sense: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25, 34).

“My master is long delayed.”  The wicked servant, that is, one who has no interest in the master except to supplant him, persuades himself that the master will not return.  He may even tell himself that the master does not really exist, and so he is not bound by any objective rules or laws the master had set down — and not even basic human decency — and acts according to to his lusts and propensity for extravagance and violence.  But here he acts against his own interests because he is a servant and does not know how to be a master.  The other servants quit and the house falls apart, untended.  The crops are not planted, or not planted at the right time and they fail.  The returning master finds his property in a disastrous shape and so he “will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  The wicked servant sails aloud in the agony of his suffering, and grinds his teeth in frustration of what he could have had if he had simply done his duty, and in rabid envy at the reward of the good and faithful servants. 

The Gospels are not for the faint of heart, and particularly not these chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, but for those who have the strength of faith and the love of God, they strengthen their strength and deepen their love.

We celebrate today the Feast of St. Monica, a woman of great faith and perseverance in prayer.  We ask her intercession for the return of wayward children to return to the arms of Holy Mother Church.

Hebrew 2

 Hebrew 2 recording :  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QWXBOxU6zLhD7Rk2KrXzw4Dhy0jNm2K2/view?usp=drivesdk

Handouts:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1--b5tXk5Dfql9P2zSbRYmrNRNb2nPGvs/view?usp=drivesdk

Wednesday in the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, August 26, 2026

Matthew 23, 27-32

Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth. Even so, on the outside you appear righteous, but inside you are filled with hypocrisy and evildoing.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’ Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets; now fill up what your ancestors measured out!”

“You are like whitewashed tombs.”  Today’s Gospel Reading continues the Lord’s reproach of the scribes and the Pharisees.  The Jews of the time provided two kinds of resting places for their dead.  Ordinary folks buried their dead in graves dug out of the ground.  The wealthier among them had tombs carved out of the outcrops of rock common in the Holy Land.  These tombs amounted to small compounds with a little courtyard and then the tomb itself which consisted of a chamber large enough to accommodate a human body lying on its back and also a few people who would wrap it and anoint it as well as recite prayers.  Niches were carved within the side of the tomb where the bones of the body would be placed after the flesh had decomposed so that entire families could be buried together.  The exterior of the tombs were kept clean and were even whitened so that they did not become overgrown with plants.  These would “appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.”  The Greek word translated here as “filth” should be understood as the Jewish concept of “uncleanness”.  This meant that touching the tomb made a person unclean, “beautiful” appearances notwithstanding.  The tomb is a thing of death, and belongs to the kingdom of darkness and death.  This, the Lord Jesus is telling the crowds, is the scribe and Pharisee, whatever his learning, his ability to speak, his expensive clothing, his elaborate prayers.

“You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous.”  The scribes and Pharisees wish to take the bones of the prophets from the places where they have lain buried for centuries and build new tombs for them as of to cover up how they were killed and hurriedly buried by their frightened followers.  “If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.”  The scribes and Pharisees attempt to separate themselves from the guilt of their ancestors without condemning their ancestors and separating themselves from them.  “We would not have joined them”, but we not have stopped them, either.  And the scribes and Pharisees do not say, “We will repent of the way of our ancestors by obeying the words of the prophets.”  The Lord concludes, “You are the children of those who murdered the prophets; now fill up what your ancestors measured out!”  The scribes and the Pharisees are their “children” in the sense that they carry out the work of their parents in opposing the truth and persecuting those who proclaim it.  Those who killed the prophets inspired by God followed prophets of their own choosing and making who validated their wicked way of life, as did the scribes and Pharisees of the day, who foisted upon Israel their own false interpretation of the Law and the Prophets, and then lived godless lives contrary to the Law.  They “filled up” what their ancestors “measured” through the harassment of John the Baptist and their persecution and killing the Son of God, even in the face of miracles that could be performed only with divine power.

Today we honor the saints — those of the time before Christ and of the time since he came — in many ways.  We name churches after them.  We make paintings of them.  We go to Mass on their feast days.  We (sometimes) name our children after them.  We take their names when we receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.  We pray to them in time of need.  We honor them best by imitating the virtues in which they imitated the Lord Jesus, recalling the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, 1: “Imitate me as I also imitate Christ.”  In this way, and infused with the Holy Spirit, we become “living temples” dedicated to the Lord Jesus, truly beautiful in every way, filled not with the dead bones of tombs but with a share in his divine life.

Personal Note: the second session of our ongoing series on Biblical. Hebrew was recorded Tuesday night and will be posted around noon on Wednesday, complete with the handouts.

Tuesday in the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, August 26, 2026

Matthew 23, 23-26

The four priests here at Blessed Sacrament continue to feel pretty well.  We are awaiting the results of our tests.  Maybe we will hear something in a few days.

Jesus said: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. But these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.”

In today’s reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew, we see the Lord pressing hard against the Pharisees and the scribes.  We might wonder why he would do this.  It is true that large numbers of them tried to steer people away from Jesus and to impede his ministry by explaining away his miracles and accusing him of breaking the law of Moses, but the crowds came and listened to him despite this, and very many of the people believed in him as the Messiah.  We must understand though that the Pharisees had become widely influential, so much so that for the ordinary Jew, the Pharisaic teaching on the law amounted to the only teaching on the law.  And yet the Pharisees took liberties with the law, upholding an oral tradition which sought to adapt the law of Moses to present circumstances.  In practice, this resulted in an unwritten code more or less equivalent to the actual law, and which went beyond it.  It is this that Jesus condemns when he cried out, quoting Isaiah: “And in vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and precepts of men” (Mark 7, 7).  Jesus condemned the Pharisees and the scribes because they taught the people their sect’s doctrines and not God’s.

An example of these precepts of men is found in “tithes of mint and dill and cummin”, which were used as spices.  Inasmuch as they were herbs, they should not have come under the law of tithing, which said, “Every year you shall set aside the tithes of all your fruits that the earth brings forth” (Deuteronomy 14, 22).  Tithing mint would be the equivalent of tithing grass or weeds.  According to the Pharisaical oral law, however, even these things must be taxed for the benefit of the Temple.  Jesus does not condemn this interpretation so much as he points out its triviality, particularly when compared with other matters: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law.”  Jesus spells out what he means by these: “Judgment and mercy and fidelity.”  That is, rather than teach the doctrines of their religion, they concern themselves with the technicalities of sustaining the Temple.  Again, Jesus does not take a position against this support, but puts it in the context of what the Pharisees and scribes fail to do.  The question should arise for them: Are we teachers of God or are we collection officers?  The Lord goes on to illustrate what they are doing: “Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!”  People who throw themselves at the enforcement of details often lack the confidence to do actual work.  It is as though through their own actions the Pharisees and scribes admit that they have no divine authority as the basis for their teaching and interpretation of the Scriptures.  Jesus calls them “blind” because they do not have the ability to see this for themselves, and yet they put themselves forward as “guides”.  And the message to the people is that they would be foolish to listen to them because no one in his right mind follows a “blind guide”.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.”  Here again, the Lord says to them, “Woe!”  The use of the word here indicates a warning of an imminent disaster.  The Lord is warning them to open their eyes and see what they are really doing and to repent.  He cried out this warning vocally two thousand years ago, and he cries it out to all sinners who are running out of time — not merely to their ears but from the midst of their hearts, from deep in their consciences.  

“You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.”  The Pharisees and their followers had a great concern for washing various items that is not found in the law.  This is an outgrowth from the cleansing that were commanded in order to make a person or a thing ritually pure.  The Lord uses this practice to point out that they worked very hard at appearances: “And all their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes. And they love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the synagogues, And salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi” (Matthew 23, 5-7).  But they were not known for their virtue: “But according to their works do ye not. For they do not practice what they preach” (Matthew 23, 3).  “Inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence: plunder through tithes, but also through the stealing of souls by their callous neglect of their duty to preach about God, his judgment to come, his mercy, and our duty to fidelity.  Self-indulgence, such as we find in Luke 18, 11: “The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give you thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess.” 

The lesson here for us as faithful Christians is to have ever before us the Cross of Jesus Christ and to be mindful of his love.  “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6, 8).

The Feast of St. Bartholomew, Monday, August 24, 2026

John 1, 45-51

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” But Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

In the lists of the Apostles contained in the other Gospels, Bartholomew is always linked with Philip, and so from ancient times the Church has understood the names “Bartholomew” and “Nathanael” to indicate the same person.  Indeed, “Nathanael” is a typical Jewish first name, meaning, “God has given”.  At the same time, “Bartholomew” is a proper Jewish surname, meaning, “the son of Tholomai”.   He came from the town of Cana and was a friend of Philip, who was called by Jesus before him.  After hearing Jesus preach, Philip went and found Bartholomew even as Andrew had gone to tell his brother Peter about him.  We hear little of Bartholomew during the Lord’s ministry.  St. John does tell us that he joined six other Apostles in going to fish in the days after the Lord’s Resurrection and assisted in a miraculous catch of fish.  Some of the Fathers and later writers held him to be a rabbi or a philosopher.  Certain traditions tell us that he preached the Gospel in India, though he might have been confused with Thomas, who did preach there.  The Armenians claim him as well as St. Jude as having brought Christianity to them, and consider both Apostles their patrons.  According to an ancient tradition, Bartholomew was skinned alive and beheaded by a king in Armenia.

St. John tells us that after his Baptism in the Jordan, the Lord lived an acetic life near the river and that John the Baptist pointed him out as the Lamb of God.  Andrew and John spent that evening talking with him, and the next day the Lord “found” Philip, and Philip, in his own excitement, went to his friend Bartholomew and announced to him that, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”  Philip is referring to Deuteronomy 18, 15-19, where Moses says to the Hebrews, “The Lord your God will raise up to you a prophet of your nation and of your brethren like unto me: him you shall hear, as you desired of the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the assembly was gathered together, and said: Let me not hear anymore the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see anymore this exceeding great fire, lest I die. And the Lord said to me: They have spoken all things well.  I will raise them up a prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to you: and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. And he that will not hear his words, which he shall speak in my name, I will be the avenger.”

Bartholomew famously asked Philip the rhetorical question, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  Not that Cana had any greater importance than Nazareth.  This reminds us of how the chief priests said later, “Search the Scriptures and see that the Prophet does not arise out of Galilee” (John 7, 52).  But Philip is insistent and so Bartholomew goes to see for himself.

“Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.”  The Greek word here translated as “duplicity” has the meaning of “treachery” and “deceit”.  The Lord may have spoken ironically here, for the original “Israel” — the name given by an angel to Jacob, the son of Isaac — was deceitful in gaining the blessing of his father.  This would be in answer to, “Can any thing good come from Nazareth.”  Bartholomew would have gotten the Lord’s point, but he challenges him further: “How do you know me?”  The Greek verb here means “to know” in the sense of “to discern”, “to make a judgment”, and “to perceive”.  This may be Bartholomew’s come-back to the Lord’s observation, that he is a true Israelite.  To this, the Lord answers, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”  This astounds Bartholomew as well as tops the exchange.  While it was true that he had been sitting under the fig tree when Philip called him, presumably some distance away, perhaps even out in Cana, the fig tree was an image of Israel in the way that the bear signifies Russia and the eagle signifies the United States.  A man sitting “under the fig tree” would be seen as an image of a son of Israel.

“Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”  Bartholomew identifies Jesus as a rabbi, and then as something much more, “the Son of God . . . the King of Israel.”  Probably he did not mean “the Son of God” as possessing the divine nature but rather in the way that in former times judges, kings, prophets, heroes, and angels were styled “sons of God”.  When he calls him “the King of Israel”, he is acknowledging him as the Messiah, the son of David.  The Lord, for his part, answers Bartholomew with, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”  In revealing to Bartholomew that he will see these things, he speaks of his future blessedness in heaven.

Likewise, the Lord says to us, who have come to believe in him as the Apostle Bartholomew did: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

The 21st Sunday  in Ordinary Time, August 23, 2026

Matthew 16, 13-23

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and 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.” Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. 

Caesarea Philippi was a large city in the region of the Golan Heights, outside of Galilee, in a region ruled by Philip II, son of Herod the Great.  It was an old city, renamed by Philip in honor of Caesar Augustus.  Not many followers of Jesus — or many Jews, for that matter — would be found there.  Perhaps this is why Jesus chose this place to ask his disciples this particular question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  The disciples have a chance to think, reflect, and answer away from the noisy crowds.  But what does the question “Who do they say that I am” really mean?  What is Jesus asking?  Not for them to say his name, or to identify him from his family, or to say what his former occupation was.  These were the ways in which a person was known in ancient times.  Jesus, though, is asking another sort of question.  He is asking the disciples to say how the people understand him based on his preaching and miracles.  “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  These are interesting answers.  The Prophets, particularly those whom they named, were known for their fiery preaching and for their challenging authorities.  Of them, however, only Elijah was known to perform miracles.  But how could he “be” one of these unless one of them had come back from the dead?  It would seem that what the people meant was that the power — rather than the person — of one of these had returned and set upon this man, Jesus.  There was precedent for this, as a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit was granted to his disciple Elisha upon the former’s ascent into heaven in a fiery chariot.  Thus, the people were saying that the spirit or power of one of the Prophets, even of the lately beheaded John the Baptist, rested upon the Lord Jesus.  

“But who do you say that I am?”  By speaking in this way, the Lord establishes what the people, those who were not Apostles receiving special instruction, believe, and so leads the Apostles to give the full answer, building on the insightful answer they had reported.  He is in fact asking his Apostles to consider the level to which their faith had reached.  It is the zealous Peter who answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  The way Matthew tells the story, it sounds as though Peter responded right away, impulsively.  He may have paused with the other Apostles in order to think about his answer, conviction filling him each second he held back until he could not contain himself.  Hearing his reply, the Lord said to him, “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.”  Peter tells Jesus who he is, Jesus tells Peter who he is.  “The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against [the Church]. 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.”  Peter would not have understood any of this at the time.  All he and the other Apostles could have grasped from the words of the Lord was that Simon’s name was now Peter — Jesus had changed his name just as the Father had changed Abram’s and Jacob’s names almost two thousand years before.  Jesus was the Son of God, exercising his divine prerogative.  Simon, now called Peter, had been changed and was elevated, and his new name accorded with and explained this elevation.  “Rock”, in the sense of a lofty mountain.  Earthquakes might shake the rock on which the Church was built, but it would not fall because of them, and hell would crumble before it.

When we tell Jesus he is our Lord, he tells us we are members of his Body.  We are able to tell Jesus who he is because this has been revealed to us, and in the same way the Lord reveals to us who we are: we are “rocks” in the Rock.