Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.
Glory to you, O Lord. Jesus went into the region of Caesarea, Philippi, and he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of man is?
They replied, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
He said to them, but who do you say that I am?
Simon Peter said in reply, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Jesus said to him in reply, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ, the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Proper staging, proper background is one of the critical elements for any big event that happens in our lives.
If you think about it, and you've probably seen pictures of a guy down on one knee with a ring case in his hand, none of those ever happen in front of five Porta Johns, right?
They're in a spectacular place or in a significant place in the life of that couple.
Politicians understand this perfectly. If they announce they are a candidate for a major office, they always do it perhaps in front of the Capitol or. Or in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
They do it in a significant place because staging matters well. Jesus understood this reality better than anybody.
So when he took his disciples off to ask them these questions, he took them to the very far north of what we now call the nation of Israel, from far north through Galilee to the foot of a mountain.
And if you go just a little bit to the east, you find yourself in Lebanon. You go just a little bit to the west, you find yourself in Syria.
And at this particular place, it was known for centuries as a place where people would go to worship.
And there are niches carved inside on the side of the mountain that reveal places where pagan gods were worshiped.
But not only that, this is the very spot where the headwaters of the Jordan river are.
And remember that the Jordan river was the lifeblood of that whole region. Without that fresh water coming out of the mountains, they would be no life.
And in fact, the Jordan river is so narrow at this point that at least I and perhaps a few of you could stand on both sides at the same time. It trickles through.
So he took his disciples there to ask them this important question. The first one is, who do people say that I am? And the natural answer they got was that people were beginning to recognize that in Jesus there was not just a truth being proclaimed, but a truth that was challenging for many people.
So he was starting to make a few enemies, exactly what the prophets did. So that would have been a natural answer.
But then he takes it a step further.
Who do you say that I am?
And at least for this particular moment, Jesus is the star pupil.
And he says, you are the son of the living God.
He got it right.
Now, it's important to remember that in a later scene in this story, he gets it terribly wrong.
So he wasn't right all the time, but at least right now he nailed it.
And Jesus pays him and them a compliment.
He says, you didn't get this on your own. God is working through you. My Father revealed this to you.
My Father gave you this gift of faith.
Now, for us today, the question he asked of his disciples there at the foot of the mountain is one that we should try to answer as well.
If he looked you square in the eye and said, who do you say that I am?
Because in figuring what that answer is, we can begin to understand what our relationship is with Christ, but even more importantly, what his relationship is to us.
And while our answer may not be identical to that of Peter, it's going to be down that same road, right? It's going to be one where we say, you are the one that loves me completely, no matter what I do, no matter where I'm at.
You are the one that brings me healing when I'm broken.
You are the one that never abandons me, no matter what happens. And you are the one that gives me life.
And all of those answers are ones that truly remind us that no matter where we go, no matter what we do, he is there with us.
He's our sustaining presence.
