24th Sunday Year B 2021

 

24^th. Sunday of Year (B)

(Isaiah 50:5-9; James 2:14-18; St. Mark: 8: 27-35)

Jesus specially chose twelve disciples most intimately associated with Himself as His Apostles to be sent out to preach in His name and cast out demons by the power of His Spirit, and the first of these, when their names are listed, is always Simon Peter. 

Most significantly of all, however, Simon Peter was chosen by the Father in heaven to recognize and confess on behalf of all the Apostles that Jesus was the Christ, that is, the long-awaited Messiah from God for Israel:

When Jesus asked them, ‘Who do you say that I am?’, Peter said to Him in reply: ‘You are the Christ.’

We find St Matthew in his Gospel account tells us more of that event :  

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. (Matthew 16:17–18)

And it is St. John who tells us of words spoken by Jesus to all the Apostles indeed, but pre-eminently appropriate for Peter as chosen by the Father:

The Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have come to believe that I came from God. (John 16:25–27)

Now, why does St. Mark make no mention of those words of Jesus to be found in both Saint Matthew and Saint John which so particularly praise Saint Peter??

It was out of the warmth and glow, so to speak, of that deep personal bond between Simon the disciple and Jesus the Master that Peter rebuked Jesus when He began to teach His disciples that:

The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days?

Peter so wanted, out of his love for Jesus, to turn his beloved Master away from what seemed to him a tragic course, that he remonstrated with Jesus in words which St. Matthew (16:22) gives us:

Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to You.”

Words again unreported by St. Mark, why?  Surely because Peter was almost immediately totally ashamed of them when Jesus answered him so deliberately and decisively.  Now Jesus answered Peter not out of human passion, but from divine intensity of purpose; for we are told that He first of all turned away from Peter in order to look at His other disciples before turning back to look Peter in the face and say:

Get behind Me, Satan!  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  

Oh, dear People of God, we are here engulfed in passion most understandably human and by a purpose most mysteriously divine, creating a tension beyond human comprehension but absolutely essential for our divine vocation and formation in Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, as children of God.  Jesus’ words, literally, ‘Away, behind Me, Satan’ repeat exactly the words He used at His temptation in the desert at the beginning of His public ministry when speaking to Satan himself.

Peter – God bless him -- seems to have drunk so characteristically deep of Jesus’ medicine correcting him, that the Gospel message he gave St. Mark as his, that is Peter’s, personal awareness and appreciation of Jesus, tells us nothing of Jesus’ exaltation of Peter as reported by St. Matthew and implied by St. John. But Jesus’ correction of Peter had to be told in total clarity because it contains an extraordinary wealth of teaching for us who want to follow Jesus as true disciples.

What hurtful words of Jesus in response to such affectionate concern!  What apparently degrading words, indeed!!  And yet, Jesus is here, giving us His most decisive and immediately-necessary salvific warning, and He chooses also to show us how to distinguish between the sinner, Peter, and the sin, Satan’s deception of Peter.

Consider, dear People of God, WHY did Jesus – as St. Mark alone tells us – on hearing Peter’s words, and yet before immediately answering him, so decisively:

            Turn around and, looking at His disciples, rebuke Peter?

It could only have been that Jesus was fully aware of the effect -- the immediate shock and perplexity – that the words He was about to say would have on those other disciples who looked-up to Peter as their leader; it also showed how much He regretted that He had to deal so publicly with Peter in a manner He would rather have done with Personal sensitivity in private.

And notice, dear friends, how very Catholic are the issues involved here, we are speaking of SCANDAL: Jesus overriding His own natural feelings and those of Peter in order to spiritually protect and guide all of His disciples,  most emphatically teaches them and us about the evil of scandal:

You Peter are (now) an obstacle (a ‘scandalum’, a scandal) to Me (because) you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  (Matthew 16:23)

Jesus knew full well how esteemed Peter was in the eyes of his fellow Apostles, and how His Father’s choice of Peter to proclaim Jesus as Messiah-come-from-God had confirmed that impression.  That was why Jesus deemed it absolutely necessary for Him to correct Peter immediately and without any possibility of misunderstanding:

He summoned the crowd with His disciples and said to them, “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 and that of the gospel will save it.  (Matthew 16:24-25)

Jesus, as we heard from St. Mark, had been teaching His disciples, the Apostles, that:

The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days;

and Jesus had always insisted that His Gospel was based, not on His own Personal authority, but on that of His Father:

The Father who sent Me commanded Me what to say and speak.  And I know that His commandment is eternal life. So, what I say, I say as the Father told Me.   (John 12:49–50)

Peter was, therefore, as Jesus said:

An obstacle to Me (because) you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  

Jesus was always perfect God and perfect man, and here, Peter was trying to pull on the human heart-strings of Jesus by his own ‘emotionality’:

God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to You.

Peter– unbeknown to himself -- was actually trying to turn Jesus aside from His divine love of His Father’s will by ‘stoking up’ His natural, human, dread-awareness of what His Passion would involve!   Here, human ‘soon-to-be-seen-as-mistaken’ passionate emotion is set against divine, timelessly enduring, compassionate love.

As we would expect, Peter in the event, so whole-heartedly drank of Jesus’ medicine that Mark – whose Gospel is generally regarded as giving Peter’s awareness and appreciation of Jesus as distinct from the other Gospels – does not pass down to us words of Jesus’ exalting of Peter; we find those only in St Matthew’s and St. John’s Gospels.

Our present-day Western-world and irreligious society mocks (and too many popularity-seeking Catholics weakly follow suit) the very idea of bad example, scandal, causing supremely real harm of a spiritual nature.    

For Jesus, however, and for all true Christians, dear People of God, it is not enough to have good intentions, as did Peter; it is not enough to have warm feelings of human affection or seemingly sincere love in one’s heart; we have got to learn from Jesus how to love both God and man, how to find that authentic love that wills to walk in and along God’s way, that is -- by the Gift of Jesus’ most holy Spirit -- to know God’s truth, His loving purpose, and saving plan, that we may adapt ourselves to it.  For, if we do not seek His truth, His will, we become all too easily Satan’s ever-useful, perhaps even sometimes favourite, tools.  In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus Himself witnesses to that beginning to happen with Peter!

Jesus saw Satan abusing Peter, using Peter to sow Satanic seeds of spiritual harm, and Jesus could not simply explain the situation to Peter, He had – in order to destroy those seeds from Peter’s heart and the disciples’ minds – to SHOW IN ALL ITS INTENSITY His own hatred of Satan, now presuming to attack Jesus once again, this time through the person of misguided Peter: 

            GET BEHIND ME SATAN!!

Today, dear friends in Christ and fellow Catholics, we are bombarded on all sides by emotionalism: the Pope smiles and embraces a child, he is so good!   If women are shown weeping, whatever questions or matters are involved, those issues are thereby, immediately, prejudiced.  Self-displaying young women and girls are so charming and pretty; surely their parents have every right to be so proud of their good looks despite innocence being discarded and Christian decency being mocked by their manifested beauty.  Children can be badly behaved, but after all they are still children and must be allowed their childhood pleasures and ‘mistakes’ (even through to 16yrs. old or more!!) what is the harm, who am I to correct them, whoever would want to correct them??

Jesus spoke harsh words to Simon Peter, but He spoke them plainly and without the slightest apology.  Why?   Because of the reality, the dreadful reality, of the spiritual harm that could have arisen from scandalous words and a seemingly loving attitude.  His disciples must not think like men but learn to think as God would have them think; they must not speak as men do, but as God wills.  Popularity is no aim for Christians, obedience is Jesus’ Personal example.

Where are we today, People of God?  Disciples are attacked for thinking and speaking to the best of their ability in line with the teaching of God and the Scriptures, the traditional teaching of Mother Church in her Saints and doctors: such doctrine is considered as inhuman for today’s version of humanity where  disciples are called upon  to please the multitude: to think as people think, and speak only what comforts them most.

To whom are these words of Jesus addressed to today?

You are an obstacle to Me (because) you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do;

to whom are they words of true significance, saving importance, and divine purpose?

Time allows me to add only this, dear People of God:  they mean that to me, and I pray they mean that also to you true disciples of Jesus, and children of Mother Church founded on the rock of Peter by Jesus according to His Father’s will.