What a remarkable
turn of events! In two weeks we get to
hear two conversations between Jesus and St. Peter. In both of these conversations, Jesus bestows
a name upon Peter. Last week, Jesus
said: Blessed are you Simon Son of John.
You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church. This week: Get behind me Satan. Kind of hard to believe isn’t it. Last week he is the rock of the Church, this
week he is Satan, an obstacle to Christ and his mission to save us by his death
and resurrection.
What does St.
Peter do wrong here? Jesus predicts his
passion on the cross, and Peter basically says: God forbid something bad should
happen to you Jesus. I don’t think that’s
the worst statement ever is it? If a
friend came up to me and said: I’m going to be murdered in a horrible way, I
might be tempted to say: God forbid that should happen to you. So, the statement itself isn’t horrible. Rather, Jesus chides Peter because of the
state of his mind: you are thinking not as God does, but as human beings
do. This is the real crux of the
matter. Last week we hear that Peter
believes with all his heart that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living
God. But, he hasn’t changed his mind
yet, he is still thinking as human beings do.
Sometimes when we think about our faith in Christ we talk about it in
terms of the heart: we want to have our hearts set on Christ. But, we need our minds to be set on Christ
too.
St. Paul is saying
something similar to the Romans in our second reading. He states: be transformed by the renewal of
your minds, then you can discern the will of God. Isn’t this basically what Jesus says to
Peter? And if St. Peter needed constant
renewal and transformation of his mind, then of course we will need it too.
But, this is no
easy task. How many times a day do we
fail to think like Christ? How many times
a day do we think like human beings and not like God? Our thoughts can be filled with hatred,
jealousy, impurity, un-forgiveness. How
many of us can say that we find these thoughts helpful? I know I don’t.
Yet, so often, and
I know this is true for me, our thoughts can be focused on the human, focused
on negatives and yet we aren’t even aware.
Think about Peter. He’s just
saying: hey Jesus, don’t die, we like you.
And yet, Jesus does him a great service by pointing out the error of his
way of thinking. Immediately after
pointing out his error, Jesus goes on to teach Peter the right way to think:
whoever wishes to follow me must deny himself and pick up his cross. We all know that St Peter does that at the
end of his life. So, that transformation
took place in him because of the patient guidance of Christ.
The same will be
true for us if we open our hearts and our minds to Christ. I think a great prayer you could say every
day would be something like this: Dear Lord, when I start thinking as humans do
and not as you do, please call me out just like you did to St. Peter. Please teach me and guide me. Perform the transformation of my mind so that
I will indeed know your will in my life and have the courage to follow it.
I’m sure none of
us wants Jesus to say: get behind me Satan…
But, it was through the guidance of Christ that Peter became St. Peter. The same can happen for us by God’s grace if
we are open to the guidance the Christ.
I think we often pray that God would help transform our hard hearts, but
today we also help us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.
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