There is a practice in today’s culture and society that can help us toward understanding this Sunday’s Gospel: opinion polls.These are conducted everywhere, especially in the political and commercial spheres. One day Jesus also wanted to do an opinion poll, but, as we shall see, for a different purpose. He did it not for political reasons, but for educational ones.
Having arrived in Caesarea Philippi, that is, in the northernmost region of Israel, and taking a little rest alone with the apostles, Jesus asks them, point blank, “Who do people say that the son of man is?”
It seems that the apostles were not expecting to be asked more than to report what people were saying of him. They answered: "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
But Jesus was not interested in measuring his popularity or in looking for an index of how well he was regarded by the people. His purpose was entirely different. So he immediately followed his first question with a second: “Who do you say that I am?"
This second, unexpected question catches them completely off guard. There is silence and they stand looking at each other. In the Greek it makes it clear that all of the apostles together responded to the first question and that only one person, namely, Simon Peter, responded to the second question: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”
Between the two responses there is a leap over an abyss, a “conversion.” To answer the first question it was only necessary to look around, to have listened to people’s opinions. But to answer the second question, it was necessary to look inside, to listen to a completely different voice, a voice that was not of flesh and blood but of the Father in heaven. Peter was enlightened from on high.
It is the first clear recognition of the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels. The first public act of faith in Christ in history! Think about the wake that a big ship makes in the sea. It widens as the ship goes forward until it is lost on the horizon. But it begins at a single point, which is the ship itself. Faith in Jesus Christ is like this. It is as a wake that widens as it moves through history, and travels to “the very ends of the earth.” But it starts at a single point. And this point is Peter’s act of faith. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”
Jesus uses another image, which implies stability rather than movement. It is a vertical instead of a horizontal image. It is that of a rock: “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.”
Jesus changes his name -- as often happens in the Bible when someone receives an important mission -- from Simon to Cephas, or Peter -- “rock.” The true rock, the “cornerstone” is, and remains, Jesus himself. But once he has risen and ascended into heaven, this “cornerstone,” though present and active, is invisible. It is necessary for a sign to represent him, a sign that makes Christ, who is the “unshakeable foundation,” visible and efficacious in history. And this sign is Peter and, after him, his vicar, the Pope, successor of Peter, as head of the college of apostles.
But let us return to the idea of polling. Jesus' poll, as we saw, has two parts, which have two distinct questions. First, “Who do people say that I am?” And second, “Who do you say that I am?”
Jesus does not seem to value very much what the people think of him. He wants to know what his disciples think of him. He immediately asks them to speak for themselves. He does not let them hide behind the opinions of others. He wants them to speak of their own opinions. Almost the identical situation repeats itself today.
Today as well “people,” “public opinion,” has its ideas about Jesus. Jesus is in vogue. Just look at what is going on in the world of literature and entertainment. A year does not go by in which there does not appear a novel or a film with its own distorted and sacriligious vision of Christ. Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” has been the most well-known one of late and has produced many imitators.
Then there are those who are middle-of-the-road, like the people of Jesus’ time, who believe Jesus to be “one of the prophets.” He is regarded as a fascinating person and placed alongside Socrates, Gandhi and Tolstoy. I am sure that Jesus does not scorn these responses to him, because the Bible says of him that he does not “quench the smoldering wick and does not break the bruised reed,” that is, he appreciates every honest effort on the part of man.
But, the truth be told, this view of Jesus does not seem quite right even from a human point of view. Neither Gandhi nor Tolstoy ever said: “I am the way, the truth and the life,” or “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worth of me.”
With Jesus you cannot not be middle-of-the-road. Either he is what he claims to be, or he is not a great man, but rather a great lunatic lifted up by history. There are no half-measures. There are buildings and structures made of steel -- I believe that the Eiffel Tower in Paris is one -- made in such a way that if you touch a certain point or remove a certain element, everything will come down. The edifice of the Christian faith is like this, and this neuralgic point is the divinity of Jesus Christ.
But let us leave aside the responses of the people and consider the nonbelievers. Believing in the divinity of Christ is not enough; you must also bear witness to it. Whoever knows him and does not bear witness to this faith, indeed even hides it, is more responsible before God that those who do not have this faith.
In a scene in Paul Claudel’s play “The Humiliated Father,” a Jewish girl, beautiful but blind, alluding to the double meaning of light, asks her Christian friend: “You who see, what use have you made of the light?” It is a question that is asked of all of us who claim to be believers.
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