349. Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

Meditations no. 599 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The Lord’s question to the Apostles: who do you say that I am?

JESUS took his disciples, on one occasion, away from his usual field of preaching. He went with them to Caesarea Philippi, in the northern reaches of Israel. There, in an atmosphere of intimacy with those who had been with him for the longest time and had witnessed his life, his preaching and his miracles, he asked them these two questions: Who do men say that the Son of Man is? And you, who do you say that I am?

The authenticity of our Christian faith depends on the answer we give to the question of who Jesus is for us. In fact, Jesus is much more than John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or any of the prophets, as his contemporaries believed. To confuse Jesus with a wise, good or religious man is to deny the essential novelty of the Gospel, on which “all the originality of Christianity as a religion founded on faith in the Son of God who became man for us depends”.

“My son,” the Father asks us, “who is Christ for you? Is your everything, your goal, the path where you want to set your footsteps? Consider also that people, in the face of the example you offer with your life, also ask you directly or indirectly: who is this Christ whom you love?”

With God’s grace, our response, backed by conduct, must be the same as that given by Peter to Jesus in Caesarea Philippi: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. But it must be a response full of consequences that are reflected in daily life. That is why, as St. Josemaría once advised, we go as if to contain the running waters, to make a reservoir, which can be used in due course in the hours of dryness, in the bad days that arise. For this, we must treat Jesus Christ with greater intimacy. Because He is the model, and you are obliged to be, not only alter Christus, but ipse Christus, Christ himself.

Whether we like it or not, we men are inclined to mimicry, to follow the examples we see and admire in others. There are people who make every effort, for example, to resemble a movie artist. It is a very common attitude; they imitate it in behavior, in manners, in dress (…). In all the fields that God has left to the free disputes of men-in science, in literature, in art-people behave in the same way. There are few summit understandings and few abyss understandings; most people are plain understandings. But we are grouped around a few sovereign figures who rise above the others; and it is common to hear-you know-: I am of this person in this matter; and I, of that one. And the scientific, artistic, literary schools appear. … Always mimicry.

And will we, our Father wondered, abandon the invitation to imitate Jesus? Each individual strives, little by little, to identify himself with what attracts him, with the model he has chosen for his own disposition. According to the ideal that each one forges for himself, so does his way of proceeding. Our Master is Christ: the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. By imitating Christ, we attain the marvellous possibility of participating in that current of love, which is the mystery of the Triune God.

If at times you do not feel strong enough to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, exchange words of friendship with those who knew him closely while he remained in this land of ours. With Mary, in the first place, who brought him for us. With the Apostles. Several Gentiles came to Philip, a native of Bethsaida, in Galilee, and made this plea to him: we want to see Jesus. Philip went and said it to Andrew, and Andrew and Philip together told Jesus (Jn 12:20-22). Is it not true that this encourages us? Those foreigners do not dare to present themselves to the Master, and they are looking for a good intercessor.

The response of Simon Peter and the promise of the Primate.

To PETER’s resolute and emphatic confession-You are the Christ, the Son of the living God-Jesus responded by entrusting him with a capital role in the Church: Blessed are you, Simon son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Peter receives from the Son of God a mission that goes beyond his own life, since it will be inherited by his successors to serve the Church, and will extend in space and time, at the service of redeemed humanity. Assisted especially by the Holy Spirit, Peter confirms Christians in the faith and is the guarantee of the unity and universality of the Church.

Love for Peter is something that the other Apostles will learn in time: when, barely a year later, they see him preaching zealously to a crowd; or when they come to him in search of light and strength to continue their ministry. Perhaps in these moments that we contemplate in today’s Gospel - with Jesus so close and without having yet received the Holy Spirit - the Apostles are unable to glimpse the immense effectiveness of the office that Christ wants to entrust to Peter. Jesus, on the other hand, is already contemplating the panorama of the years to come, the harmony of grace and truth that will spring up around his disciples: ju god and gentiles, men and women of the whole world, with their souls filled with the same love for their Vicar, treading in the footsteps of his passage on earth.

Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam (Mt 16:18). Peter will be the visible Head of the Church, the Prince of the Apostles, the Vice-Christ. All the others are subject to him. With their weaknesses - which those men also had - with their impulses of rebellion, with their impertinence, the subjects obey. At the Council of Jerusalem, it will be discussed, it will be discussed, but in the end the figure of Peter will rise, as Head of the Apostles, to dogmatize with the same majesty with which Pius IX will do during the Vatican Council, after centuries: visum est Spiritui Sancto et nobis (Acts 15:28). it has seemed to us to the Holy Spirit and to us … And they all bow their heads before the affirmation, before the command that is no longer of man but of God himself.

What example do the first Christians, our usual models, offer us in terms of submission to authority? Infidelities, betrayals, apostasies, abound among them, but rebellions against Peter, disobedience to the Head, none of Scripture tells us. A babble of rebellion, born of love for the apostolic man who had drawn them to Christ, is nipped in the bud, at birth, by Paul: “Baptize Peter, baptize Paul, baptize Apollos. … There is one who baptizes: Christ!” (cf. 1 Cor 1:10-12) (…). The faithful remain united to God by subjection to those who command; they preserve their peace, in perfect submission to the will of those who occupy positions of leadership. And what about us?

Union with the Roman Pontiff is a guarantee of fidelity to Christ.

BUILT ON the foundation of Peter and the Apostles, the Church is the light and hope of forgiveness for the men and women of every age, the place where God speaks to us and heals us, where we always find reason to trust in Heaven’s help with supernatural optimism because, as our Father wrote, the enemies of God will not prevail: they will have no power against the Church or against those who, instruments of God, serve the Church.

Union with the Pope is a sure path of fidelity to God and fruitfulness in our service to the Church. Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia, St. Ambrose taught: “Where Peter is, there is the Church; where the Church is, there is no death, but eternal life.” Our love for Christ is inseparable from our love for the Church and for the Roman Pontiff. That is why our Father encouraged us: love, venerate, pray, mortify him every day with greater affection - for the Roman Pontiff, the cornerstone of the Church, who prolongs among all men, throughout the centuries and up to the end of time, that work of sanctification and government that Jesus entrusted to Peter.

Fostering affection for the Pope-which translates into prayer and obedience to his magisterium-is one of the principal objectives of our apostolic work. At a time of great controversy over a fundamental point of Catholic doctrine, a Father of the Church wrote to the person responsible for these errors: “We exhort you, venerable brother, to accept with obedience all that the Most Holy Pope of Rome has written; for Blessed Peter, who lives and presides in his own see, helps those who seek the truth of the faith. For we, for the sake of peace and law, cannot deal with matters that affect the faith except in communion with the Bishop of Rome.”

This veneration is a very important part of the heritage we have received from our founder. Without union with the Episcopal Body and with its head, the Roman Pontiff, there can be no union with Christ for a Catholic. In 1964, after his first audience with Paul VI, elected Pope a few months earlier, our Father affirmed: In Opus Dei we have an extraordinary affection and a great veneration for the person of the Pope: an affection and veneration that we want to grow every day. In my desire to serve the Church, I have always tried to make my children love the Pope very much.

As Father wrote in one of his monthly letters, “these wishes of St. Josemaría continue to be fulfilled, thanks be be be be made throughout the world. … By divine goodness, St. Josemaría’s aspiration that I have tried to resound frequently in your ears is fulfilled daily: omnes cum Petro ad Iesum per Mariam!: that all the men and women whom the Lord places at your side may go, with Peter, to Jesus through Mary. Thank you, Lord, I repeat once more, as I lift up my heart overflowing with affection to the Mother of the Church, through whose intercession all good things come to us.”

We conclude our meditation with a few words from St. Josemaría that summarize our intentions of loyalty to Christ. Faithfully attached to the Vicar of Christ on earth-to the sweet Christ on earth-to the Pope, we have the ambition to bring to all men the means of salvation that the Church has, making a reality that aspiration, which I have been repeating since the day of the Holy Guardian Angels of 1928: omnes cum Petro ad Iesum per Mariam!