WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?

SUNDAY, TWENTY FOURTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Isa 50:5-9; Ps 116:1-6,8-9; James 2:14-18; Mk 8:27-35

Who do you say I am?

Our Lord puts an important question to his disciples in the gospel. By extension, the question is also directed to each of us. The first question is about the people's perception of him. “Who do people say I am?” Our Lord understands that our views about things are mostly shaped by those around us. What we believe about Jesus Christ and the way we relate to him are informed by what we hear from people and see people do around us. Our prayer life, for example, is usually shaped by the prayer life of people around us. So, our lives are shaped to conform to the way of the people around us. There is nothing wrong with this, for all of us grew up in a culture. Culture is the way of life of a people about their reality. We must not live on the general view and cultural life, but each of us must validate and authenticate what we have received to build a personal understanding. Hence, Jesus did not stop at the first question he proceeded to ask the second question, which is the most central and all-important personal question. “But you, who do you say I am?” This question is self-authenticating. It is validatory because it helps us to confirm the truth of a thing of reality to confirm its claim for ourselves. It is also self-authenticating because it aids us in affirming the veracity or falsity of the claim of a thing for self.

As expected, the views of the people fell short of the truth. The people regarded our Lord as one of the prophets of old. This view defines the manner they followed him, as a prophet of God. A popular spirituality always falls short of the truth, for it is made of here-say. Our spirituality must never be on what people say about Jesus Christ; it must be a personal construct from our experience of Jesus Christ. This is why the second question must be personally attended, not once, but daily. As we read that Peter correctly answered the question by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “Peter spoke up and said to him, ‘You are the Christ.’” But as we know subsequently, he immediately acted contrary to what he answered by advising and dissuading our Lord from suffering his passion. The answer to the question our Lord put to us today is a mystery that unravels every day as we exercise faith in prayer and our daily living. The answer to the question is given to us in meditation, and the answer we receive must be self-authenticated and internalised in our exercise of faith in our daily life. We must enter into the mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ daily to know our Lord in a personal and saving way. This is what the Lord means when he says: “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the same of the gospel, will save it.”

The answer the Holy Spirit reveals to us in answer to the question of the identity of Jesus Christ is an invitation to enter and know the mystery of the Father. Hence, the name Jesus Christ is an open door leading to the mystery of our faith. It is a gate leading into the path or way we must walk to arrive at the truth. It is based on this that James writes that the Christian faith is not a dead or inactive faith; it connotes the activity of dying to self. “Take the case, my brothers, of someone who has never done a single good act but claims that he has faith. Will that faith save him?" Faith in Jesus Christ is an invitation to enter the mystery of God’s love by dying to self. We show we know Jesus Christ by following him to death through the way of the Cross. Dying is difficult for our human nature, which is why few people are found on the way. Christianity is a difficult religion. We are only familiar with what people say Christianity is.

This difficulty implies that the question Jesus Christ asked us is difficult, and beyond our capability to answer, and our Lord knows. In the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord affirmed that Peter got a revelation of the answer from his Father in heaven. The question is a take-home assignment we must take up with the Holy Spirit, our indwelling divine guest. Lord sent the Holy Spirit to us for this purpose, that he may lead us into his truth. “He will reveal to you what is mine.” He guides us into the mystery of Jesus Christ in answer to the question he put to us about his identity. Isaiah in the first reading expresses the difficulty of walking the path of the word of God to hear and do God’s will. “The Lord has opened my ear. For my part, I made no resistance, neither did I turn away. I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face against insult and spittle.” In the face of the mystery that the Lord is to us, we must each day cry and pray in spirit: “Let me know you, Lord.” He will hear and reveal himself to us for he is our life. “I love the Lord for he has heard the cry of my appeal; for he turned his ear to me in the day when I called him.”

Let us pray: Look upon us, O God, Creator and ruler of all things, and, that we may feel the working of your mercy, grant that we may serve you with all our heart.