In this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus asks the disciples who people are saying He is, and then He asks them who they say that He is. Peter answers that He is the Christ of God.
Curiously, Jesus then “rebuked them and directed them not to tell this to anyone.” One might assume Jesus would be pleased that the disciples now understood His true identity and would encourage them to begin proclaiming this to the people.
Why Did Jesus Embargo the Information?
He provides some clues in the words that follow when He tells them that He “must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” In other words, it sounds as if the time is not right. Perhaps the people are not ready to receive the information at this stage, nor even the disciples. Perhaps the true and complete meaning of his mission could not be understood before His death and resurrection.
St. Cyril of Alexandria
St. Cyril of Alexandria, a Doctor of the Church, writes about this in the 5th Century. He offers the following:
Wasn’t it the duty of disciples to proclaim him everywhere? This was the very business of those appointed by him to the apostleship. But, as the sacred Scripture says, “There is a time for everything.” There were things yet unfulfilled which must also be included in their preaching about Him. They must also proclaim the cross, the passion, and the death in the flesh. They must preach the resurrection of the dead, that great and truly glorious sign by which testimony has borne him that the Emmanuel is truly God and by nature the Son of God the Father. He utterly abolished death and wiped-out destruction. He robbed hell and overthrew the tyranny of the enemy. He took away the sin of the world, opened the gates above to the dwellers upon earth, and united earth to heaven. These things proved Him to be . . . in truth, God. He commanded them, therefore, to guard the mystery with a seasonable silence until the whole plan of the dispensation should arrive at a suitable conclusion.
St. Ambrose of Milan
Writing a century earlier, St. Ambrose of Milan proposed that there may have been many reasons for the Lord to take this approach: to deceive the prince of this world, to reject boasting, to teach humility, and to “prevent rude and as yet imperfect disciples from being oppressed with the wonder of this awful announcement.”
Soon enough time would come.
