Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
I had just finished the 11 am Mass two Sundays back. I had greeted people and was heading back to the sacristy. A little girl, still in church with her mother and her siblings asked me, “Do you like being a priest?” I said to her, “I love being a priest!” She looked at me like she wanted to hear more or like she did not know where to go next. I asked her, “Do you know why?” She shook her head. I said, “First, I get to celebrate Mass. And then, the best part of my life is that I spend all day and everyday doing good!” She wanted more. I said, “I visit people when they are in the hospital, I help people when someone has died, I help the poor, and I am there for people when they need me.” I may have said a few other things. I wanted to say to her, “I hope you will think of becoming a priest!” I could not and did not. But one thing is true – that I am eternally grateful to God for my vocation to the priesthood in the Catholic Church.
If a child came and asked you if you like being who you are, and why, what would you say? Today’s gospel reading may help us answer the question.
“Who do you say the Son of Man is?”
To fully understand today’s gospel, we need to understand Matthew’s geography. He says, “When Jesus came to the area of Caesarea Philippi…” (Mt 16:13). Caesarea Philippi was originally called Panion after the Greek god Pan. When the Romans conquered the region, Augustus Caesar gave the city to Herod the Great. Later, Herod’s son Philip rebuilt the city and changed the city’s name from Panion to Caesarea Philippi after Caesar and himself. Because of its history, Caesarea Philippi was a place of competing allegiances. Greek culture, Roman imperialism, and Jewish tradition contested with each other in this little town. It is in this place of competing allegiances that Jesus asked his disciples the question, “Who do you say that the Son of Man is?” (Mt 16:13).
Peter recognized that something greater than Greek history, Roman imperialism and Jewish tradition was present in Caesarea Philippi. Peter answered Jesus by confessing, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” (Mt 16:16). Jesus was greater than the Roman politics, Greek mythology, Herod’s ambition. Peter’s clarity in the midst of the competing ideologies of the time is the reason Jesus told Peter, “You and Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”
The practical implication for us is that amidst the many competing realities of our times, we are invited to know and understand Jesus Christ with the same clarity that Peter did. This means that we do not confuse Jesus with our politics, our economics, or our cultural and national identities. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus is above all, beyond all, and greater than all. The clearer we are about Jesus Christ, the more blessed we are.
Letting Christ Define Us
With this clarity, I would like to return to the earlier story of my priesthood. What if I said to you that even though I cherish my priesthood, I do not consider it my primary calling? My primary calling is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I live my discipleship through my priesthood.
Let me explain. Jesus called his disciples first to follow him. There is no gospel account of Jesus ordaining the Twelve as priests. The only gospel account we have of the Twelve having a priestly role is the Last Supper, when Jesus entrusted the New Passover to them and said, “Do this in memory of me.” For three years before that, the disciples had to learn to follow Jesus. They gave up their homes, their families, their livelihood, and their other allegiances to follow Jesus. Similarly, I was not ordained a priest and then learnt how to follow Jesus. I was first called to follow Jesus, and after eleven years of learning what that meant, I was ordained a priest. As I said, my priesthood is the way in which I live my discipleship.
The one thing that is common to all of us is that our primary call is the call to discipleship. Whether you are married or single, a father or a mother, a parent or otherwise, a child or an adult, a priest, a religious or whatever you might be professionally, our primary calling is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
This means that it is Jesus Christ who defines us. If as a priest I do not understand what it means to be a disciple, what kind of a priest would I be? Whether you are a doctor or a plumber, an educator or a grocery shelf stocker, an engineer or a media influencer, letting Jesus define who you are makes all the difference. The clearer we are about who Jesus is for us, the clearer we become about who we are.
The practical implication of this is that the clearer we are about Jesus Christ the more our life gets defined by his life and teachings. And the more we understand that our primary calling is to be a disciple, the more central Christ becomes to our identity and our dignity.
“On this Rock I will build my Church”
On the one hand, faith and discipleship are very personal decisions. On the other hand, faith is practiced in a community of disciples. Matthew calls this community ekklēsia. It literally means an “assembly” or “gathering.” It comes from the two words, ek meaning, “out of” and kaléō meaning, “the ones who are called out.” The ekklēsia, then, is a gathering of disciples, those who are “called out”. Jesus calls it “my ekklēsia,” my church.
Christ founded the Church and for this reason it is divine and holy. But the church is made up of disciples and to that extent it is human and imperfect. The Church is a divine-human mystery on earth. Christ wills that our faith in him is lived in the ekklēsia that he founded. As Catholics we find an unbroken chain in faith and tradition to that very Church Christ founded and with Peter as the rock on which Christ built it.
By the time Matthew wrote the gospel, Peter had been martyred for about twenty years. The fact that Peter’s role in the church continued far beyond his death tells us that Peter’s role as first among the apostles was an accepted article of faith. Today, Pope Leo is the unbroken link to what Jesus Christ had instituted and over the last two thousand years, the gates of the netherworld have not prevailed against it.
It is by our baptism that we join ourselves to the community of disciples we call the Church. Let us recommit ourselves to living our faith in Christ and in the Church of Jesus Christ.
Today, Matthew invites us to reflect on three things: clarity about Jesus Christ, the call to discipleship, and the willingness to live our faith in the Church Jesus founded and entrusted to Peter’s care. All these three realities come together in the Eucharist we celebrate at this altar. May our celebration be a celebration of the clarity of our faith in Jesus Christ, our personal discipleship, and our call to live our faith and discipleship in and through the Catholic Church.
- Fr. Satish Joseph