Mass readings for Aug. 23:
Isaiah 22:19-23
Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8
Romans 11:33-36
Matthew 16:13-20
Hassled for a sign, I imagine worn out, Jesus turns to his disciples. As if it’s something of a pop quiz, frustrated he asks them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Were his own disciples as hard-hearted and hard-headed as the Sadducees and Pharisees? Read through the beginning of this chapter from Matthew’s Gospel to understand the context here. Were the disciples also leaven-like men without faith demanding signs? This is what Jesus wanted to know. It’s why he asked the questions he asked: “Who do people say the Son of Man is...But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:13-15) Jesus hoped his disciples would be different.
Thankfully they were. Peter speaks for them all. “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16). Peter sees what so many do not, that Jesus is the Messiah. Beyond the rustic Galilean, beyond the carpenter, even beyond the wonderworker and the provocative preacher, Peter sees that Jesus is the promised Christ – the prophet like Moses, Emmanuel, the Son who is one with the Father (Deuteronomy 18:15; Matthew 1:23; Jn 10:30).
But his insight is not fully his own. Well, it is, but mysteriously it is first a gift of faith given to him by God the Father (Matthew 16:17). And here we come to the first simple lesson, the lesson of faith.
One must understand, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught at the very beginning of the Summa, that “human beings are ordered to God as an end that surpasses the grasp of reason.” That is, human beings are created to know what they are incapable of fully knowing by their own efforts.
That’s not to say that humans are incapable of reasoning reasonably enough that God exists; they can indeed rationally come to grasp, as St. Thomas put it, that “which everyone names God.” But to know God and not merely know of him is to enjoy knowledge of a different kind.
Reading about someone and knowing someone personally are two different kinds of knowing. For the latter sort of knowing, when it comes to God, can come only by way of revelation, by the initiative of God himself, by his own gift; or as Jesus put it, “by my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:17).
So, what does this mean for you? Or what does this mean for the person you know who is wondering about God, asking those first beautiful questions about belief? It means that to make any progress at all, one must first be open to the possibility that faith is necessary to seek understanding.
One can’t merely do research or rationally read oneself into believing; reading, reasoning and research are indeed important, but the seeking person needs more, an initial openness to a light that comes from beyond oneself, from God. That is, spiritual enlightenment is always in some way the fruit of prayer, even if the praying person doesn’t exactly realize that’s what he or she is doing.
Faith then is what separates the disciples from the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Christian from the pagan. But what comes next? Again, the lesson is simple. After faith comes a new identity, a new vocation.
“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 16:18). This is Peter’s unique vocation. These words are written atop St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. These words are why what St. Irenaeus wrote almost 2,000 years ago is still true that “every church, that is believers from everywhere, must agree with this church,” that is, the Church of Rome founded by Peter and Paul.
This is why our first reading is from Isaiah 22, very simply, Eliakim prefigures Peter. Here is the biblical beginning of our understanding of the papacy.
Yet however beautiful all that is, we shouldn’t lose sight of what this passage teaches the rest of us about ourselves. Peter was given the gift of faith, but so are we. Peter was given a vocation, but so are we. Peter’s vocation is a vocation of mercy, a vocation that builds up the Church. But so is my vocation and so is yours.
Now, I’m not ever going to be a pope and likely you won’t be one either. But with the pope, sharing in the faith with him, our task is to live out our unique vocations which all serve the same heavenly ends: To share the mercy of God and the fullness of his Church.
But again, it does all begin with Jesus and the question he puts to each of us: “But who do you say that I am?” And so, what’s your answer?
