Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Simon Peter can give us all a lesson during this Lenten season. As the disciples gather and Jesus converses with them, honest remarks are made. The disciples share who the people of the region think the Messiah is. Similar remarks and conversations can be held today. Who is God? Who is your worship or meditation oriented to? What possessions are idolized in our personal life and culture?
Focal Point
The Gospel and Sacred Tradition can be our focal point for living in close relationship with God. We can ponder what we would be without the Gospel and Tradition and can observe what that looks like in our post-Christian world.
Our identity comes from God who was made flesh, and that message of identity has been preserved through the Chair of Peter. “Out of the whole world, one man, Peter, is chosen to preside…Peter is thus appointed to rule in his own person those whom Christ also rules as the original ruler” (St Leo on the Church and St Peter, Office of Readings). In reflecting on Peter, I am drawn to his humility and identity. He proclaims, “‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’” in today’s readings. Peter is enlightened to know that he is in the presence of the Messiah built upon the encounters since Jesus first had called him from the shore.
When Peter accepts the call to follow Christ, his identity is transformed. Yet, later in scripture, Peter strikes the slave of the high priest and denies his accompaniment with Jesus. We see this as a moment of weakness where Peter fell short of boldly bearing his identity in God. Following the Crucifixion and Resurrection, Peter professes his love to Jesus in John 21 which Jesus reminds Peter of his duty to the flock of God. What great humility Peter has in John 21 when Jesus asks for agape love! The virtues Peter holds are human and can relate to us. Jesus continuously converted and transformed Peter in his strengths and weaknesses.
Love and Lord
May we continuously have the courage to profess that God is love and Lord over all dominions. This season of Lent can be a time in which we train and fix our eyes on heavenly things. In the trials and temptations of life, we need to be reminded that truly God and the Spirit are active in the world and thus we should proclaim the Good News and impassion people about their identity in God. When worship isn’t correctly ordered and our possessions become our obsessions, we must turn to the church to be converted and edified by God’s persistent love and care for his children.
The Spirit of God has maintained the Church for centuries. The Chair of St Peter remains today. Praise God for men who have answered the call to “tend the flock of God” and have strived to “be examples to the flock” (1 Peter 5). Just like Peter and our parish priests and bishops, we have identity with whom Love pours out. All of the Church is given the opportunity to claim that identity and imitate in lowliness the humility of being subservient to the Church, which is our foundation.
