Thursday in the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 5, 2021

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.