XXI-A-Is. 22:15, 19-23; Rom. 11:33-36; Mt. 16:13-20

 

In today’s Gospel Jesus confronts his disciples with a very difficult question: the opinion of people about him, and their personal opinion about him. It was the time the orthodox Jews were actually plotting to destroy him as a dangerous heretic.

When the people identified Jesus with Elijah and Jeremiah they were paying him a great compliment and setting him in a high place. Then came, the most important question, “Who do you say I am?” With this question Jesus reminds us that our knowledge of Jesus must never be at second hand. A man might know every verdict ever passed on Jesus; he might know all the Christology; he might know every teaching about Jesus; he might by-heart every commentary on the teaching of Jesus; he might analyze the historical background of every utterance of Jesus. But Christianity never consists in knowing about Jesus; it always consists in knowing Jesus. Jesus demands a personal verdict from every Christian. “Who do you say I am?”

Speaking about one’s response to Christ, C. S.Lewis said, “I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” — If we accept Jesus as a moral teacher, then we must necessarily accept Him as God, for great moral teachers do not tell lies. Jesus is not merely the founder of a new religion, or a revolutionary Jewish reformer, or one of the great teachers. For Christians, he is the Son of God and our personal Savior.

When this question was addressed to Peter, his answer was, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” We do not know what was the idea of Peter about Jesus. He might have conceived Jesus as the son of God who came to abolish the rule of the Roman Empire and restore the Kingdom. Or he might have conceived him as spiritual reformer; but the experience of Peter made him a different man. On the day of Pentecost, this ignorant fisherman addressed multitudes who spoke different languages, but they heard him in their language. He stood before the rulers and authorities and declared his loyalty to his master; he accepted imprisonment for the sake of his master; and finally he embraced death on the cross.

For the last 20 centuries this question has been repeatedly addressed to a number of Christians; and their lives depended on the answer they found for this question. During the first three centuries, the Church boasts about eleven million martyrs who fertilized the tree of faith with their blood. The martyrs are the most intriguing and most beloved saints of Christianity.

Neomartyr Michael Paknanas was less than twenty years old, and he worked as a gardener in Athens in the 1800s. The Turks, who enslaved Greece at the time, were trying to convince him to give up his faith. When flattery and wealth failed to persuade him, they put to use some of their more convincing standard missionary work by torturing the teenager. When all the tortures proved to be futile, the executioner was preparing to behead the young man, but at the same time he was feeling some compassion for him. So he began cutting his neck slowly with the sword by administering very light blows, while asking the martyr to reconsider. The martyr's response? "I told you, I am a Christian. I refuse to give up my faith." The ax-man struck with another light blow to make some more blood flow, to possibly convince him. The martyr repeated, "I told you, I am a Christian. Strike with all your might, for the faith of Christ." This totally aggravated the executioner. He did exactly that, and St. Michael was sent to the heavenly mansions.

These are the people who understood who Jesus is. And what is his place in their lives. The four Gospels are filled with demands straight from the mouth of Jesus Christ. These demands are Jesus' way of showing us who he is and what he expects of us. He expects an answer from each one of us, “Who is Jesus for us?”

The knowledge of Jesus as Lord and personal Savior should become a living, personal experience for each Christian. This is made possible by our listening to Jesus through the daily, meditative reading of the Bible, by our talking to Jesus through daily, personal and communal prayers, by offering our lives on the altar with Jesus whenever we attend Holy Mass, and by our leading a Sacramental life. The next step is the surrender of our lives to Jesus by rendering humble and loving service to Him in Himself and in all others, with the strong conviction that Jesus is present in every person. The step after that is to praise and thank God in all the events of our lives, both pleasant and painful, realizing that God’s loving hands are behind everything. May this Holy Mass help us to recognize Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer and lead us to exclaim like Thomas, My Lord and My God.