On Peter

     A couple weeks ago, I wrote on Jesus' trials while fasting in the desert and His resistance of Satan's temptations.  At the end of Saint Luke's account, he writes that when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time. (Lk 4:13) The message is somewhat disconcerting, yet I think we find it to happen time and again in our own lives. The human life ebbs and flows through moments of great temptation to do evil like large waves that come in from the vast sea of existence. There are stretches where the waves subside and the waters are calm, but we are acutely aware that temptation is never far away. To use another natural example, our earthly lives are lived as though a great tornado is bandying about all around us. There are times of calm, but we ought to be mindful that it is at these times when we are squarely in the eye of the twister of temptation, not safely outside its influence.

     In any event, we find in today's Gospel (Mk 8:27-35), the devil has returned to the Lord with a vengeance. Jesus and His disciples are walking when He asks them, Who do people say that I am? The question is a purposeful one: for certainly Jesus already knew that many who heard Him speak considered Him as the second coming of one of the great prophets such as Elijah. Initially, the disciples tell Jesus as much, which sets the stage for Him to ask the far more important question: But who do you say that I am? I get the impression from the account that this inquiry was met with a few moments of silence. The disciples were probably looking at each other, wondering who would have the courage to provide a reply. In truth, many of the disciples at that point in Jesus' ministry probably thought what many of the people thought; Jesus was a great prophet and teacher. Yet we find that Peter sees Jesus' true nature in His response: You are the Christ.

     To our Lord, it must have been a great relief to have someone acknowledge His true nature. Peter's profession allows Jesus to speak openly in the subsequent lines about the suffering, rejection and death He was to endure in the future. At this moment of candidness, the devil returns and seeks to work through Peter to dissuade Christ. Peter takes Him aside and counsels Him not to go through with the crucification. Jesus replies very bluntly, saying Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.

     How are we to read this shocking rebuke of Peter--the future "rock" upon which the early Church was to be formed? First, the rebuke was not directed at Peter so much as the evil that was speaking from within him. He scolded Peter because he was trying to prevent Jesus from accomplishing the His purpose. Jesus rebuked him promptly because He knew that it was a bad idea to let temptation linger. The devil was trying to exploit the emotions Jesus must have been feeling. The relief He felt from Peter's proclamation of the Lord as Christ no doubt had Jesus feeling a special bond with Peter at that very moment. It is only human to feel a special bond with those who show us love and respect, and Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine. The issue lies in that it is also human nature to want to please our friends and listen to their legitimate advice. The Gospel does not give an account of Peter's words to Jesus, but surely he seemed to be acting out of love and concern for his friend who had just told him His life would be in danger. Yet even the love and advice of friends can be the work of the devil when it is intended to counter or impede the fulfillment of God's will. Jesus, knowing this, is able to risk His friendship with Peter in order to avoid compromising the work of salvation.

     How many Peters do we have in our lives--good friends or family members who try and prevent us, under the guise of their best intentions to help us, from doing what we know we ought? Do we have the courage to be respectful but firm with them, like Jesus was with Simon Peter? Or do we usually give in to the pressure because we do not want to "rock the boat" with the people we interact with most frequently?

     At the end of the Gospel, Jesus addresses a crowd and tells them, Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. Sometimes, our denial must take the form of denying ourselves complete peace with our brothers and sisters. Sometimes, we are called to carry the cross of being mocked and disliked, because we seek to stay true to the faith in a world that seeks to satisfy itself first. We are continually tempted to save things of this world-- friendships, positions of power and wealth, honor and pride-- at the expense of our convictions. When we do so we are, in a very real sense, preparing our death because we our surrounding ourselves with things that will not last past our earthly deaths. What will vast riches purchase the dead man? Will not a man who is honorable in the eyes of the world be largely forgotten once his home and the home of those that honored him is the grave? Will the friend you chose over God be able to save you once it is time to face judgement from the God whose friendship you spurned?

     If all these things we long for are transient, then what sense is there to make them out to be our gods? Wealth and people, honor and power are all good things when they are order correctly in our lives. But none of them can offer the salvation that the Lord alone provides. Thus, we should order everything in our lives below God, and as such be willing to lose any and all of them for the sake of saving our place in heaven.

     This logic is absurd to many people because they do not believe in life after death. If that is the case, then they are correct. But then one cannot then also deny that life on earth is absurd as well, because it serves no greater purpose than to simply occur. This was the message of classical existential atheists like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Yet if we do believe in life after death, then death is no longer really a death but rather a birthday, and life on earth greatly shrinks in terms of its relative importance in the scope of the eternal life of our soul. When viewed from this lens, it then becomes absurd to clutch onto the imperfect "treasures" of this world, only to find our hands too full to grad hold of God's eternal gift of perfect rest in Him. If we believe that life after death is real, then we ought to desire others to attain that life and be willing to preach of Jesus--the one who, by virtue of His unquenchable love, so desired to procure that life for us that He willingly denied Himself, took up His Cross, and lost His life on Earth.

     In order to follow Christ, one must willingly sacrifice some things and be willing, if called, to sacrifice all things. The great writer C.S. Lewis once said, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." I would argue that the same can be said about this earthly life we are all living. If there is no God, then it is of no importance. If there is a God, however, then life here is of infinite importance, because it is the doorway through to a closer relationship and true knowledge of God in heaven. Yet many reverse those last two clauses and determine that, because there is no true knowledge of God in this life, He must not exist. We must all determine whether we hear the muffled, distant calling in the very pit of our being, and whether we want to summon up the courage to follow the call to its source. We will not know for certain until the moment of our death, but it very well could be God beckoning through the door of doubt and into the grand foyer of faith.