Who Do We Say That Jesus Is? That Peter Is? That We Are?, 21st Sunday (A), August 27, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
August 27, 2023
Is 22:19-23, Ps 138, Rom 11:33-36, Mt 16:13-20

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel we have one of the most important dialogue in all of salvation history, crucial in the life and work of Jesus, pivotal in the history of the Church. Jesus turns to his closest followers and asks two connected questions: First, who do others say that he is? Second, who do you — meaning each of them — say that he is.
• When Jesus asked the first question, there were many responses. Everybody was comfortable to participate. They replied by saying the people were numbering Jesus among the greatest figures, past and present, in Jewish history. Some, like the murderous Herod Antipas who had decapitated the Lord’s precursor, were saying Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Others were claiming he was Elijah, the greatest of all the prophets, the one whose return they believed would set the stage for the Messianic age. Others said he was Jeremiah, who they believed had hidden the ark and the altar of sacrifice before the destruction of the Temple and who they anticipated would return to reinstitute true worship. At the time Jesus asked the question, many of the Jews were accustomed to say that there had not been prophets for 400 years, and therefore, whoever Jesus was, the crowds believed that he was likely the greatest figure in at least four centuries. But as high as those estimations of Jesus’ reputation were, who he truly was was still much greater. That led to the second question.
• When Jesus asked, however, whom they themselves said he was, that’s when most of them caught laryngitis. Most refused to go out on a limb, even among themselves. St. Bartholomew, a.k.a. Nathaniel, whose feast day was Thursday had already basically answered the question the day he met Jesus for the first time, when he called him the “Son of God and the King of Israel,” pointing to Jesus’ divine and human origins as the Son of the Eternal Father and the descendent of David. But even he remained quiet. Peter, however, took the risk. He stood up and boldly replied that Jesus was far more than a great prophet, far more than the greatest figure in centuries, far more even than Moses. He wasn’t just the Messiah, the long-awaited Savior for whom the Jews had been waiting for a millennium. He was the Son of the Living God.
• Today as new students arrive at Columbia and already returned students join them at this Mass, Jesus could ask both of us anew these questions. First, who do others say that he is? What do they see about him in the Core Curriculum? What do the history profs say? What about students getting doctorates in theology or religious studies at one of the graduate student faculties? What do the film makers in Hollywood say and the music producers and artists? What do the most recent polls say? It’s impossible for them objectively to ignore Jesus, whom impartial historians would be able to say is the single most impactful figure of all time. But many would try to reduce Jesus just to an important ethical teacher, a religious leader, an innocent victim of capital punishment, a self-described Jewish artisan from a small town in Galilee. CS Lewis made clear he couldn’t be merely a good teacher, because he said he was the Son of God, and that would mean he’s either who he claims to be or was either a lunatic who mistakenly thought he was God’s Son or a conscious liar and therefore a scoundrel. But even should some people respond with the words we will pray later today in the Nicene Creed, it still wouldn’t be enough for us to stop at what other people say about Jesus, however short of the mark or accurate.
• Jesus always makes the second question: who do you say that I am? One of the biggest challenges when young people prepare for Confirmation and even more head away for college is to make their faith truly personal. It’s a choice no longer to live off the faith their parents, grandparents, or godparents, but to make their faith their own. Jesus asks each of us to tell him whom we think he is. Is he truly the long-awaited one, the Messiah? Is he the Son of God and our Savior? And he wants to help us to say that not just with our lips, but with our life, by our body language, by our choices. If Jesus really is who he says he is, and if we confess him to be the eternal Son of God and our Redeemer, then that must impact the way we will live out our time at Columbia. If we say he’s God, then we’re going to want to spend time with him in personal prayer each day, that we’ll prioritize meeting and receiving him at Mass, then we’ll try to get to know him through his word with the various Bible studies offered, then we’ll try to keep our life in communion with him through living according to his teachings and more. That’s why it’s a gift that at the beginning of the new students’ time at Columbia, Jesus asks this question.
• But the Gospel doesn’t stop there. After Peter gives his courageous and true confession, Jesus makes one of his own. He declares, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loosen on earth will be loosed in heaven.” It’s an incredible confession. Jesus changes Simon’s name to kepha in Aramaic, “rock” in English, and promises to build his Church upon him. Similarly, he says he will give him the keys of the kingdom of heaven to bind and loosen in heaven and on earth.
• The place where Jesus made this confession is Caesarea Philippi, which I’ve had the privilege to visit many times in the Holy Land. It’s in the north of Israel, very close to the Syrian border. There’s a huge limestone mountain face where Philip the Tetrarch, one of the Herod the Great’s sons — the brother of Antipas and Archelaus — had built a temple to the pagan god of the wild and of sex, Pan or Ba’al. There was a huge cave in the mountain face that was considered at the time the gates of the netherworld from which a powerful stream would mysteriously emanate and where people would worship God by committing acts of bestiality. For Jesus to say to Simon there that he was the Rock was to emphasize how solid he would become after the descent of the Holy Spirit and how important would be his mission to strengthen his brothers. To promise that the gates of hell wouldn’t prevail against the Churchthere was to emphasize that the Church would triumph over the pagan worship encountered there and elsewhere. And to speak about the building of the Church there is important, because it is from that underground stream that the Jordan is born, a symbol of baptism by which people would enter into the Church built by Christ on Peter.
• For those of us who profess Jesus to be the Messiah and Son of God, we must echo on earth Jesus’ confession of Peter. To state we believe in Christ but do not believe in the Church Christ has founded on Peter is to be inconsistent. To profess we believe in Christ but do not believe in Christ’s giving Peter the keys isn’t true to our faith in Christ. To declare we believe in Christ but think that Christ gave the keys to Peter and that Peter took them with him to the grave, as if what Peter did among the first generation of apostles was no longer needed in the second, and third and subsequent generations, just doesn’t take the commission Jesus gave Peter seriously.
• The Church proclaims this truth at the front door of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Whenever I have the privilege to give tours of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, I always point out to the pilgrims the huge marble bas relief sculpture over the main entrance of the Basilica, depicting what Jesus says to St. Peter in today’s Gospel. The Church shows Jesus giving the keys to a kneeling Peter along with a blessing because this Gospel is not only the foundation of the papacy but also in some ways the founding architectural element of the Church, built, like St. Peter’s Basilica was, literally right on top of Peter’s mortal remains. Jesus’ reference to the keys and to binding and loosing was a fulfillment of what God had prophesied through Isaiah in today’s first reading. Isaiah wrote that God would summon his servant Eliakim to be the master of the king’s palace, to be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the house of Judah, that he would place the key of the House of David on his shoulder, and that whatever he opens no one shall shut and whatever he shuts no one shall open. He underlined that he would fix Eliakim firmly like a peg in a sure spot. This is what Jesus did with Peter, would be not just a firm peg, but a living Rock on whom his whole family can be secure and, as the major domo of Christ’s house and the vicarious holy father of Christ’s family, with the keys of the palace would open and shut doors of earth and in heaven. That God would allow a human being to have this type of vicarious authority is mind-blowing, but it is, in fact, what God did in Israel and what he did all the more in Christianity.
• So for us at the beginning of a school year, as some students here are beginning their time at Columbia, Jesus doesn’t ask merely “Who do you say that I am,” but, “Who do you say that Peter is? Who do you say his successor the Popes are?” The papacy is a great gift given to the Church to keep the Church one. Not every pope has been a saint, but 149 of 265 have been, and most of the non-saints have at least been good servants of the Lord. For us to believe in Christ is to take seriously what he has done, and he founded the Church with an earthly authority that extends even to heaven. There are some who say, “Christ, yes; the Church no!,” but that’s not worthy of a believer, because to profess Christ means to profess what Christ professed, and to believe what Christ says today in the Gospel about Peter.
• And so our time at Columbia is an occasion for us to grow not just in our love for Christ, but also in our love for what he loved, which is the Church, which is his Bride and Body. It means not to be ashamed to be a Catholic, but to recognize as Catholics we have received an enormous inheritance in the papacy, in the teaching authority of the popes, and in the keys entrusted, which refer fundamentally to the Sacraments and most especially to the Sacrament of Confession. It leads us to exclaim, as St. Paul did at the end of today’s second reading, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” It also leads us, like Peter and like Christ, to be willing to make repeat their double proclamation publicly, because we recognize we’re not just saying something about our their identities but about our own!
• Today as we get ready to receive the Lord Jesus in Holy Communion, it’s a time for us to make and proclaim the choices Christ places before us today. When I lift aloft Jesus’ Body and Blood after Holy Communion, I urge you to hear him asking you, “Who do you say that I am?,” and to confess to him silently, adoringly and with conviction, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” And in your thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion, I’d encourage you to ask the Lord Jesus abiding within you then to help you make with Him the confession with regard to Peter and his successors the Popes, and to help you to build your whole life here at Columbia and beyond on the gift of the papacy that Jesus made the living rock on whom he wanted to build each of us as living stones.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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