Jesus and his disciples are about 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee and on the eastern side of the Jordan. Caesarea Philippi was then a new town. It was built by Philip, the Tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, at the time our Lord was still a boy. It was named both after Philip and after Caesar Augustus. It seems from the answers given by the apostles people did not yet recognise Jesus as the Messiah. When he asked the disciples for their own opinion, it seems that Simon answered in the name of all of them. “You are the Messiah.” There follows the second of the three passages in this part of St. Matthew’s Gospel highlighting Simon.
1. Jesus gives him a new name, Kepha in Aramaic, Petros in Greek, Pierre in French. Peter in English, which means a “rock.”
2. The name indicates the task; Simon is to be the rock foundation on which Jesus is going to set up his church.
3. The word used for “church”, ekklesia, is the Greek word which was always used to translate the Hebrew word for the Chosen People. Simon will be the strong foundation of the New Chosen People, the Christian community.
4. The “gates of Sheol,” in Greek Hades, the place of the dead, will not prevail, because just as Christ himself will be the victim of sin and death, but will conquer sin and death by rising again and passing into eternal life, so will all those who follow him in the Christian community be set free from both physical and spiritual death.
5. Jesus gives Simon the keys, and as we saw in today’s first reading, that means authority in the community. The authority is a spiritual authority to teach the community what they must believe as true and what they must reject as false, what they must do because it is good and what they must not do because it is bad.
6. Simon’s decisions in these matters will have the approval God of himself.
7. Because Christ is providing for the future of his church after his ascension and because of the need for permanence also after Simon’s death, the catholic church has always believed and taught that the promises made by Christ to Simon hold good, not for Simon only, but also for his successors.
8. It has always been the teaching of the catholic church that Simon’s successors are all those after him who have been lawfully chosen to be Bishop of Rome, where Simon ended his life.
9. Notice that when Jesus knows that the disciples believe him to be the Messiah, he at once warns them not to make it known. Jesus did not want people to know, because their idea of the Messiah had become political rather than spiritual and Jesus had to face the problem, that there might be a revolution amongst the people against the ruling Roman authorities, if they knew that the Messiah had come, and he would be at the centre of it, if they knew he was the Messiah.
The time is the reign of king Hezekiah in Judah, between 716 and 687. The super-power in the Middle East at that time was Assyria. Shebna was one of the court officials, who had tried to persuade king Hezekiah to revolt against Assyria and to seek support from the king of Egypt. This was in direct opposition to the advice of Isaiah. Just as Isaiah had advised Achaz not to fight against Israel and seek help from Assyria, Shebna was in charge of the kings household and Isaiah 36: 3-22 shows that his office was taken over by the man called Eliakim. The key, which was a symbol of his authority to admit people into the presence of the king, was worn on the shoulder and it comes back in Matthew 16, 19, today’s Gospel, and in John 20,23. The early Christian writers, known as the fathers of the church, see Eliakim, who took over from Shebna, as a symbol of Christ, who took over from the leaders of Judaism, and there is a short anthem in the liturgy of Advent which describes Christ as the key of the house of David, who alone has the power to open and shut. Eliakim is also described as a “peg in a sure place.” In the Gospel of today Christ in his turn gives Peter authority in the church by giving him the key and making him the firm foundation on which the church will stand. This reading seems to be chosen for today to match the Gospel in which Christ invests Peter with authority over the Church on earth in his place.
Paul has been describing the great love that God has shown towards the Jews in preparing them for Christ and towards the pagans in calling them to Christ, and he is filled with wonder at the great wisdom of God. He is filled with an awareness that no human being is big enough to understand God’s decisions and the way he carries them out. Paul expresses his wonder in the short and powerful hymn of praise that forms this reading. He uses a quotation from the prophet Isaiah to help him to express himself and a quotation too from the book of Job. Paul has been struggling to understand the problem of the rejection of Christ as Messiah by the Jewish nation as a whole. He has done the best that his mind can do, he does not say he has seen the solution to the problem, he trusts only in the wisdom and the love of God. God has given human beings a mind, there is no greater task for the mind of man than that of trying to understand God and his ways, but every human mind has a limit beyond which it cannot go, a full understanding of God and his ways is beyond the scope of the greatest human mind and when it has reached its limit, the human mind can only accept what it cannot understand and praise God for his surpassing greatness, as Paul does in today’s short reading. God remains beyond us. These words of Paul’s about God can easily be turned into a prayer of praise addressed to God. God is the one from whom everything comes, by whom everything is directed and to whom everything goes and therefore He is to be praised for ever. There is no greater prayer than the prayer of praise.
Kefa W. MHM
What you’ll find here is my personal reflection on Scripture. I don’t claim to have all the answers, only a sincere desire to seek truth. Some of the references used are drawn from past study and experience, and I may no longer be able to recall all their exact sources. Feel free to leave your comments or personal reflections below as we continue to grow deeper together in the Word of God. I’ll see you next Sunday.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.