Who am I for you?
Listening the Spirit
Come, Holy Spirit, pen our hearts and minds to the presence of God.
Guide us as we listen to Your Word, that we may know Jesus more deeply
and recognize who He truly is in our lives.
Take away our distractions and preconceptions.
Holy Spirit, lead us from simply knowing about Jesus
to truly encountering Him, loving Him, and following Him.
Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.
Listening the Word: Matthew 16:13-20
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.
Reflection
Maybe we are used to reciting formulas that express our faith, but sometimes we forget they are precious in themselves. I believe in God, our Father, Son of God, our Savior, etc. In a sense, we adopt this terminology to express what we want to believe and what we hold as true deep in our hearts. When we are little, we cannot understand things deeply; our reasoning is simple even if our heart is big. As we grow older, the heart loses its power, and the intellect starts building up. The memorized statements may stand, but they are void. As we get older, our faith needs to mature accordingly, but sometimes the only thing we are left with is with a kind of structure, or a skeleton.
If we try to answer the question that Jesus asked his disciples: Who do you say that I am? We know many possible answers. We can go one by one and try to understand which one is better, which fits more for us, which makes us feel more comfortable. We can go deeper in our understanding of God, but a good grasp of the terminology we use to address Jesus is fundamental. Our answer, as the one of Peter in today’s Gospel, has been revealed by our heavenly Father.
Our faith, what we have received from our family, friends, catechists, priests, teachers, etc., is a treasure that has been handed over through generations and persecutions. We may not understand it fully, but it is the skeleton on which our own experience of God will fit and grow fully mature. What would be our faith without the faith we have received from others? God has revealed himself not only to us but to countless generations, and we are receivers of it. Our faith is not our personal faith but the faith of a community of believers.
Let us give thanks to the Lord for the gift of faith and because of the contribution of so many people who came before us. And we ask that this faith may be treasured and nurtured in our hearts so that we can share it ourselves with people around us.
Reflection Questions
1. If Jesus asked me personally, “Who do you say that I am?”, how would I answer—not only with the words I have learned, but from my own lived experience of faith?
2. What people have helped me receive and grow in faith, and how can I treasure what they have handed on to me and share that faith with others?
