This Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word invites us to reflect on the theme of the Church as a community of believers, where all authority must be understood as a service to the people of God; likewise, we are invited to reflect on the identity of Jesus as the Messiah and answer the question, who is Jesus for us?
The first reading (Cf., Is 22, 19-23), presents us with God guiding human history to carry out his saving plan. Yahweh constitutes Eliacín as the servant of his people. God chooses whom he wants to entrust with a mission of service.
The Gospel (Cf., Mt 16, 13-20), narrates the election of Peter as shepherd of the Church. Jesus confers that authority on him in the gesture of handing over the keys; It is not, obviously, an authority to command more but to serve the people of God more. Authority is imposed, it is not the despotic exercise of power (political, economic, religious, or intellectual), but an authority founded on truth, honesty, in short: moral and spiritual integrity. Our pastors, in the exercise of their ministry, base their leadership on the model of Jesus. All authority must instill confidence and credibility.
Pope Benedict XVI told us: “Often, for man authority means possession, power, dominance, and success. For God, on the other hand, authority means service, humility, and love; It means entering into the logic of Jesus who bends down to wash the disciples’ feet (cf. Jn 13: 5), who seeks the true good of man, who heals wounds, who is capable of a love so great as to give life because it is Love” (Angelus of January 29, 2012). Jesus is the model of shepherd whom we are all called to follow. The Church needs shepherds “according to the heart of Christ”, faithful caretakers of the Lord’s flock.
In the second reading (Cf., Rom 11, 33-36), Saint Paul shows us that God’s plans are often not comprehensible to men. The believer must always give an answer of faith. The choice of Peter, a humble fisherman, to entrust him with the care of the Church is, without a doubt, one of those designs of God. Peter had previously made a profession of faith: “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” but that truth was not the product of the apostle’s wisdom but a revelation from God.
In the time of Jesus, messianisms were in effervescence in Israel, even more so because of the oppressive situation in which the Jews lived before the Roman occupation. There was no shortage of characters who presented themselves as “Messiah” dragging many followers behind them, movements that ended up being violently crushed. Many people, listening to Jesus and seeing his miracles, came to think of the possibility that Jesus himself could be the Messiah or at least his immediate forerunner. It is in this context that Jesus asks the question: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Mt 16, 13).
The disciples collect people’s opinions about the identity of Jesus. For some, it was John the Baptist (who was supposedly risen). In fact, the evangelist Luke picks up that popular version that reached the ears of Herod Antipas (cf., Lk 9, 7-9). For others Jesus was Elijah; There was also the popular belief that Elijah had not died, but had been taken to heaven (cf., 2Ki 2:11), and that, as Malachi announced, he would come to prepare the way of the Messiah (cf., Mal 3, 23). Finally, for others, Jesus was one of the ancient prophets. In all cases, in the collected versions, Jesus was recognized as a prophet and even as a precursor of the Messiah, but not as the Messiah himself. The Jews had an idea of ‘Messiah’ as a “successor of David”, with political features, with the power to drive out the Roman army of occupation, restoring the honor and glory of Israel, beginning a new stage of earthly reign; the Messiah is considered a superman; but Jesus doesn’t fit that mold of Messiah.
Jesus asked his disciples: “You, who do you, say that I am?” (Mt 16:15). Jesus requires his disciples not only to collect the versions of what people say about him but also to take a position regarding his person and his work. It is essential that the disciples know who they are following: A religious political leader who will restore the kingdom of Israel? To a suffering Messiah who must go through the humiliation of the Cross to reach glory? The meaning and scope of the follow-up will depend on the answer given to the question posed by Jesus.
The disciples had closer contact with their teacher, they had witnessed his miracles, and they had received his teachings directly, yet it was not guaranteed that they had really understood who Jesus was. What was the actual dimension of your mission? Like the common opinion of the people, the disciples imagined a Messiah full of power, with the ability to restore the kingdom of Israel, driving out the Roman invaders. Jesus, on the other hand, wants to purify these false ideas of messianism by making them understand that the Messiah had to suffer, and that his kingdom “was not of this world.” Jesus needed to prepare his disciples by showing them the true nature of his messianism.
Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). Pedro obviously couldn’t understand the true meaning of what he was saying. Jesus orders his disciples “not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah” (Mt 16:20), since he does not want his messianism to be misunderstood. Peter’s recognition of Jesus as the ‘Christ’ is incomplete, in the sense that Peter has a reductive idea of what that title attributed to Jesus means, he cannot conceive and accept the idea of a “suffering Christ”, and less the death of the ‘Anointed’ on the wood of a cross. In the process followed by Jesus, it becomes evident how the title of ‘King’ or ‘Christ’ attributed to Jesus is misunderstood (cf., Mt 27, 17ff). The disciples themselves did not come to understand the true nature of Jesus’ messiahship until after the resurrection.
The text of Peter’s confession allows us to know how the disciples of Jesus gradually became aware of the true nature of Jesus’ messianism. For the men of our time, it is also essential to rethink the question asked by Jesus: Who do they say that I am? A question that still applies to every believer who claims to be a follower of Jesus. Who do we really follow? A Jesus that we have built according to our needs or expectations, that is, a Jesus made for us? It is important to contrast our idea of ‘Christ’ with what has been revealed in the Scripture and Tradition of the Church; it is important to heal ourselves from the false messianisms of our time.
The question posed by Jesus: “You, who do you, say that I am? (Mt 16:15), It is a direct and personal question to each one of the believers, and expect a response that is also personalized. That answer springs, indeed, from our knowledge of the Scriptures, but above all from our experience of personal encounter with Christ. Jesus is not only the bearer of the Word of God, but he himself is the Word made flesh (cf., Heb 1, 1-3). Jesus is not a distant character in history; because of his resurrection he is not limited to a time or space, that is to say: he is contemporary with us, and that is why we can meet him, that is why he can continue to question us.
The true disciple is not the one who can answer a questionnaire about Jesus, but the one who decides to follow him every day, assuming the consequences of that following (carrying the cross). The issue of the identity of Jesus must be framed within the issue of following: We know Jesus in order to follow him. Following Jesus necessarily implies some kind of renunciation. No Christian is exonerated from the cross, but that cross makes sense for the risen crucified.