In today’s gospel, we hear the famous passage of Simon Peter’s faith-filled proclamation of Jesus’ identity of the Son of God near Caesarea Philippi. Typically when reading this passage, Catholics focus on Simon Peter’s name change and the institution of the Petrine office. However, the Markan account (the evangelist read this year) is very brief and does not include the ‘keys to the kingdom’ quote of Jesus or the name change that we find in Matthew. In fact, what we read next is not flattering to Peter whatsoever.
After Peter’s proclamation, Jesus interestingly instructs them to tell no one. This is a significant detail present in many gospel stories, and secrecy seems to be Jesus’ preferred method until His triumphal arrival into Jerusalem on Palm/Passion Sunday when He claims that if He were to silence the crowds, the rocks would cry out the truth of who He is. We are not exactly sure why Jesus did this, but the simplest explanation is the same one that the Gospels give. Simply: His time had not come. To reveal He was the Son of God on a grand public scale would have resulted in death. In fact, it did end in death. But at the moment of Peter’s proclamation, the time of Jesus’ death had not come.
But Jesus does want His apostles to know that His time is coming. He prophecies for the Apostles and disciples that He will be rejected, killed, and rise again. Peter, on the heels of making a proclamation of truth about who Jesus is, now proclaims that it should not be so that Jesus should die. Jesus in turn calls him Satan. Consequently, Peter experiences a roller coaster of emotions in the matter of minutes going from the high of proclaiming truth about Jesus to being rebuked as Jesus’ main adversary.
How can Peter go from receiving the Petrine office and being blessed to rebuked as Satan? It is a matter of the words from His mouth and where they come from. Jesus tells us in the Matthew account that Peter’s proclamation of Jesus being the Son of God has been revealed to Peter by God. However, when Peter is concerned for Jesus’ life, Jesus tells Him that he is using Satan’s (or worldly) wisdom. How often does this happen with us? We receive a spiritual truth from God, yet we try to fit it into our worldly standards. If we apply spiritual truths with human wisdom, we often fall short of God’s wisdom. Is Peter to be blamed? Probably not. It makes sense to say that Jesus should not die. Yet, what happens if Jesus had listened to Peter, and decided it was best for Himself not to die? Then all of humanity is without a savior.
The message that we should reflect on this week is: What truth is God trying to reveal to us about Himself? Is He revealing His love? His mercy? His justice? And once we receive this, how should we apply His revelation? Do we apply worldly wisdom to spiritual problems? Or do we take time to listen to the Holy Spirit, and follow Its inspiration, even if it’s hard to believe or understand? We will not always make the right decision. Just look at Peter, who uses human wisdom on multiple occasions in the Gospels, which results in failure. But, our loving Father will continue to reveal to us His truth if we earnestly try to learn His wisdom, even if we are slow to understand as Peter was in certain moments.
