The Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time, August 23, 2020

So far, all of us priests here at Blessed Sacrament feel pretty well.  We should know soon whether any of us test positive for the coronavirus.  Please continue to pray for us so that we can resume our work here.

Matthew 16:13–20

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.

The great question at the heart of each of the Gospels is, Who is he?  Each of the Gospels can be read as an attempt to answer this question in ways persuasive to the original readers or hearers.  That is, St. Matthew, in answering this question for his Jewish or Jewish Christian audience, puts forward the Lord as the legitimate successor to Moses and the prophets, and as the one who fulfills the prophesies pertaining to the Messiah.  Matthew presents him as preaching and teaching, just as Moses and the prophets, but his teaching is divinely authenticated by powerful miracles.  St. Mark, writing for a Gentile Christian audience of recent converts, emphases the powerful works performed by the Lord Jesus.  This appealed to the former worshippers of such gods as  Hercules and Apollo.  But Mark shows that the Lord goes way beyond these fictional figures in that he is historical — he truly walked the earth not long before, and that his works were greater than those of these gods, especially in that he rose from the dead by his own power.  And very significantly, his works consisted of acts of mercy and healing.  This was no mere hero: this was a Savior, and his salvation extended to all who believed in him.

In the midst of his miracles, authoritative preaching, and parables, Jesus poses the question to his Apostles.  This marks a turning point for them.  Heretofore they had followed.  Now they must believe. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  No leader asks his followers such a question.  To do so would show a fatal lack of confidence in himself to his followers. It is as if he is checking his principles against what the polls say the people want them to be.  Such a person is not a leader but an opportunist willing to hire himself out as the puppet of powerful forces solely to gain personal power.  But Jesus asks this question in order to set up his next question, to them.  He wants the Apostles to understand how they are different from the others who follow.  They are to be the first believers, and the first teachers — and something more.

The Apostles have listened to the crowds and spoken with them and they have even discussed this question among themselves: “But the men wondered, saying: ‘What manner of man is this, for the winds and the sea obey him?’ ” (Matthew 8, 27).  They answer him that which they are certain he already knows full well: ““Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  They have have never known Jesus to waste a word, to speak an idly, and so they wonder what he will say next.  He does not leave them long in suspense: “But who do you say that I am?”  Today, we answer this question in a formal way at holy Mass when we profess our faith with the recitation of the Nicene Creed.  It is a simple act to perform.  We say it in unison with a crowd.  If we miss saying a word, no one around us, let alone the priest in the sanctuary, notices.  We have said the Creed so often that we can spout it off without even realizing that we are doing it, especially if we are amongst others reciting it.  But in the moment Jesus posed this question to his Apostles, no such creed existed.  No set words could be summoned up for the occasion.  Whoever spoke must do so from his heart.

It was Simon, the son of John, the fisherman from Bethsaida, the most zealous of the Apostles, who spoke up: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  

We see the monumental nature of his answer in what “the Christ, the Son of the living God” answers him: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”  These words ought to astonish us even today.  God had not spoken to a human being in this way before except on one occasion, to the Virgin Mary, through an angel.  What the Lord Jesus says to this man in these and the following words he did not say to Abraham, to Moses, or to any of the Prophets — indeed, not even to his other Apostles at any later time.  What the Lord does here with Simon, the son of John, the fisherman, reverberates throughout the future of human history.  It is “my Heavenly Father” who has revealed this — the divinity of his Son — to you.  By extension, we can say that the Father reveals this to anyone who believes in the divinity of the Son, but it happened here first, and it receives a dramatic confirmation from the Son himself.

“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”  The Lord has changed the names of various Apostles before, or given them nicknames.  But the changing of this name signifies a great mystery, and we must compare what the Lord does here to what he did when he changed Abram’s name to Abraham.  On that occasion, God told him: “Neither shall your name be called any more Abram: but you shall be called Abraham: because I have made you a father of many nations” 

(Genesis 17, 5).  “Abram” is a compound of two Hebrew words that mean together “exalted father”, or, “lofty father”, whereas Abraham literally means “father of many”.  The name change signifies the changing of the person and of his destiny.  The former Simon (a name related to the Hebrew verb “to hear”) now becomes a rock for the Church of God (cf. Matthew 7, 24-25).  The name would also seem to speak of Peter’s character: rough, rugged, solid, just as “sons of thunder” did of the youthful zealousness of James and John.

“And the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”  The Greek word translated here as “netherworld” is actually “Hades”.  Was the original Hebrew word Jesus used “Sheol”?  We do not know.  Here, Hades might be understood as a figure for death, for this was the name of the ruler of the underworld in Greek mythology.  Since it was also the name of that realm, the Lord could have been speaking of the kingdom of the dead, but this is a very Greek concept.  A vast difference exists between Sheol and Hades.  In Sheol, the place where the souls of the dead went before the Resurrection of the Lord, one had hope of sharing in that Resurrection.  No hope existed for those in Hades.  The Greeks knew it as their final destination.  To understand what the Lord meant when he said the word translated as “Hades”, we have to look at the only other place in Matthew where this term comes up, when the Lord is quoted as saying, “And you, Capharnaum, shalt you be exalted up to heaven? You shall go down even unto Hades” (Matthew 11, 23).  That is to say, the hell of the damned, as the Fathers tell us.  “Not prevail”.  This can be understood in two ways.  The gates of hell can be seen as besieging the kingdom of heaven, or, better, the kingdom of heaven can be seen as besieging hell, and that hell’s gates will not hold against the angels and saints of God.  That is to say, the Church will snatch souls threatened with damnation and convert them so that they become saints.  That is to say, all of us.

We ought to think about St. Peter more than we do.  Even the bits and pieces we learn of him in the Scriptures help us to see what a most remarkable man he was.  And we ought to give thanks to the Father for revealing the truth about the Son to him, and to the Holy Spirit for prompting him to speak so boldly.