Sermon 146a:Twenty-first Sunday, (A)
(Isaiah
22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20)
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Oh, the
depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are
His judgments and how unsearchable His ways! For, from Him, through Him
and for Him, are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.
That hymn of St Paul expresses
beautifully the spirit which animates those who have a true appreciation of God;
and since the Incarnation and Work of our Redemption are the greatest works of
God’s inscrutable wisdom, how could any mere mortal know the dispositions of
God in regard to His Christ, the Messiah?
When the mother of James and
John asked Jesus for positions for her two sons, one at His right hand and the
other at His left in His Kingdom (Matthew 20:21), Jesus answered that, despite
the sacrifices she and her husband Zebedee had made by wholeheartedly supporting their sons
decisions to leave home and their father’s business in order to follow Jesus, it
was not for Him Jesus -- out of an imaginary debt of gratitude? -- to give
places such as she was asking for, because they were exclusively at the
disposal of His heavenly Father and belonged to those whom His Father had chosen or would choose to
give them. Thus, there was mystery even for Jesus concerning His
disciples: true, He had chosen them, but they had been sent to Him by His
Father (John 6:44):
No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draw him.
And so, in today’s Gospel
reading, when Jesus puts the question:
Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
and then follows it with
another:
But who do you say that I am?
we can sense Him waiting to
discover which of the disciples the Father would choose to give the right understanding
of the mystery of His Person.
It was then that Simon spoke
up, giving voice to a wisdom that was not his own:
You are the Christ the Son of the living God!
Who has known the mind of the
Lord? writes St. Paul; and Jesus -- recognizing His man, so
to speak -- said in response to Simon’s assertion:
Blessed
are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to
you, but My heavenly Father.
And here we are at a supremely
significant moment for the Church of Jesus: the Father has picked out,
designated, Simon for special prominence in the proclamation of the truth about
Jesus’ Person, and in the continuance and extension of His ministry of saving
grace; and Jesus, recognizing His Father’s intervention, adopts His Father’s
choice by Himself appointing Simon as head of His Church by bestowing on him a
new name, Peter, for that very purpose and function:
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.
The name Peter is a translation
(through the Greek) of the Aramaic word ‘Kepha’, which is identical in form
either as a personal name, or as the noun, ‘rock’.
People of God, this is also a
moment of great significance for each of us personally. The Church,
as a visible structure, is established, founded, upon Peter’s faith; and in
like manner, as regards the interior and spiritual life of each one of us, the
Kingdom of God is to be established in consequence of our act of
faith. The whole supernatural life-stream in us originates with our act
of faith whereby we say ‘yes’ to God’s revelation, and to Mother Church’s
proclamation, of Jesus. Just as Mary said ‘yes’ to Gabriel’s
message, so our ‘yes’ of faith-in-Jesus allows God’s saving grace to enter our
lives and begin to totally transform and transfigure them.
But what kind of faith is
this? Earlier in St. Matthew’s Gospel (14:33) we were told how Our Lord
walked on the waves of the storm-tossed lake towards His disciples labouring
hard to keep their boat afloat, and how Peter had – at Jesus’ bidding – begun
to walk from the boat towards Jesus, before hesitating and then beginning to
sink. Jesus rebuked Peter for his little faith as He raised him up,
before they both got into the boat and the wind ceased. Whereupon, we
read that:
Those
in the boat worshipped Him saying, ‘Truly, You are the Son of God.’
To those words Jesus answered
nothing at all so far as we know. Yet later on, Jesus having left the Sea
of Galilee with His disciples for the northern hills approaching Mt. Hermon, when
Peter used similar words as reported in today’s Gospel:
You are the Christ the Son of the living God!
Jesus proclaimed him blessed
because he had been favoured with a revelation from His heavenly Father.
What was, what is, the
difference between: ‘You are the Son of God’, and, ‘You are the
Christ the Son of the living God’, that brought about such a reaction from
Jesus?
In the second example Peter
recognizes Jesus as not only the ‘Son of God’ but also as the Christ,
the Messiah … in other words, as distinct from the terrified disciples’
acclamation of Jesus as Son of God, that is as One able to perform such wonders
as silencing the storm, which was an acclamation which expressed their own
relief as much as it acknowledged Jesus’ sovereign power, Peter’s inspired
exclamation expressed no such personal relief, but ‘with heart and voice’ he proclaimed
a divinely bestowed awareness of Jesus not just as the powerful Son of God able
to work miracles, but as the SAVIOUR; the Son of God indeed, but come to save
and redeem from -- make atonement for – the sins of Israel and all
mankind! And this was presaged years
before by Zacharias the father of John the Baptist, one taught of God about the
calling and future mission of his son:
Blessed
be the Lord, the God of Israel, for He has visited and brought redemption to
His people. He has raised up a horn for
our salvation within the house of David His servant, even as He promised
through the mouth of His holy prophets from of old. (Luke 1:68–70)
Yes, dear Brothers and Sisters
in Christ, the faith which saves us today, the faith which is God’s gift, is
not merely knowledge about God, but the ability to recognize and respond to the
divine truth of God’s presence and saving-power in Jesus -- His beloved,
only begotten Son, come among us as Man in order to-save-us-from-sin in His
Person and through His Church.
There are those today who
denigrate concern for doctrinal accuracy, not only in public words but also
personal thinking. For them, with them, the words ‘dogma’ and ‘dogmatic
thinking’ have acquired unsavoury overtones of meaning whereby they are said to
imply an overbearing, intolerant, and rigidly narrow cast of mind, to stifle
our spontaneity and thwart our native spiritual growth. Again, such
thinkers and speakers claim that there is no such thing as objective truth, no
incontrovertible truth concerning God.
But look at Jesus in today’s
Gospel! How interested and concerned He was that men, above all His
disciples, should think the truth about Himself; and such was His esteem for
that truth that when He heard Simon give voice to it He immediately concluded with
absolute certainty that His Father had spoken to and through Simon, with
the result that He most solemnly declared:
Blessed
are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to
you, but My heavenly Father.
Moreover, He then went on to
speak words of enduring validity:
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.
Again, later on He would
declare (John 18:37):
For
this was I born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to
the truth;
and would, on the eve of His
crucifixion speak in prayer to His Father these most holy words:
Righteous
Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these (You have given
Me) know that You sent Me (John 17:25),
where knowledge of truth
embraces as one with the Father, both Jesus and His disciples.
Faith is, indeed, a most sure
knowledge of divine truth, for Jesus Himself is ‘the Truth’; and it requires,
calls for, a total commitment of love.
To know the Truth, to recognize
the Truth, to appreciate, love and proclaim the Truth … that is a most sure
sign of God’s loving presence. On the other hand, to embrace error,
rejecting the truth, is subject to the following dread judgment of Our Lord:
Because
I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. Whoever belongs to God hears
the words of God; for this reason you do not listen, because you do not
belong to God. (John 8:45-47)
A theologian may be able to
write volumes about God and more volumes about the Church and what it should be
like ... but that, in itself, is not the exercise of Christian faith. You
who see in Christ your own Saviour, you who have come to Mass, who draw
near to the Holy Table at Communion, you who frequent the Sacraments and listen
to the Word of God and obey it … you are those of whom Jesus said:
Blessed
are you; for flesh and blood have not revealed (such things) to you but My
heavenly Father!
That ability to recognize Jesus
as SAVIOUR, the God-Man, come to save each one of us personally, and to offer
that salvation to the whole of mankind by means of His uniquely Personal
self-sacrifice on Calvary, now sacramentally offered in His name in His Church,
that is the true Christian faith which is the Father’s best gift.
A most important aspect of the
need for dogmatic teaching in the Church and accurate personal thinking is the
fact that our thoughts guide our choices and form our characters. And
that is the reason for the apparently strange, but in reality most significant expression in the New
Testament writings, to do the truth (John 3:21; in the Latin,
‘qui facit veritatem’) well rendered in a more modern idiom by:
Whoever lives
(practices) the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen
as done in God.
You who are true disciples of
Jesus and desire earnestly to grow in love of Him and fidelity to Him, know, hold
fast to your awareness of Catholic doctrine. Do not let random vague
feelings determine your deliberate thoughts, do not allow the emotionality of those
who speak so much about the sufficiency of human help, human goodness, mutual sympathy,
and scientific pseudo-knowledge (science knows nothing more than the
latest working hypothesis) betray your oneness with the eternal, creating-supporting-and-saving
God. But rather, through your deliberate thoughts mould and adapt your
feelings to the Truth of Jesus in the Church, and then endeavour
whole-heartedly to love that Truth -- at times it has to be willed as
Truth before it can become loved as Truth -- with your total commitment.
Note also that Simon said ‘You
are the Christ’ foretold by the prophets from of old; the
Christ whose message is for Israel and for the whole world through Israel; the
Christ with Whom the whole world in all its inarticulate beauty, majesty, and
power resonates in deep, mysterious, harmony; the Christ who fulfils all
the longings and desires of the human heart; the Christ in Whom alone our
individual lives at last take on a transcendent significance and purpose, so
that we begin to experience something of the unimaginable joy of life
penetrated through and through with a love leading to fulfilment both temporal
and eternal.
In this aspect of our Catholic
and Christian faith, People of God, lies the hidden treasure of our heavenly
calling and earthly service for our world today; for we have to live ever more
deeply our faith that Jesus is the unique Christ and only Saviour for
the whole of mankind, because He is Perfect God and Perfect Man. We must
develop our ability -- by grace and through prayer -- to recognize and respond
to Him; and, in Him, with Him, we must learn to love the Father in heaven and our
brethren on earth at all times and in all circumstances. Only as we -- His
humble and sincere disciples -- appreciate this ever more fully, will we be
truly living in the heart of this sinful world as authentic witnesses to and
members of Jesus, and in Him as Spirit-formed and Spirit-endowed children of
the heavenly Father.
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