Well, St. Peter certainly went from hero to zero pretty
quickly, didn’t he? Last week, our Gospel reading from the beginning of Matthew
chapter 16 described the Lord extolling and praising Peter’s faith: “Blessed
are you, Simon, Son of Jonah”. The Lord then promoted Peter, we might say, as prince
of the apostles. “You are Peter, the rock, and upon this rock I build my
Church, and I will give to you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” Here, Peter
and his successors, the Popes, were given by the Lord himself, the highest
authority in the Church—the power, authority, and responsibility to loose and
bind.
This fact is expressed in canon law, which says “The bishop
of the Roman Church, in whom continues the office given by the Lord uniquely to
Peter, the first of the Apostles, and to be transmitted to his successors, is
the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ, and the pastor of the
universal Church on earth. By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full,
immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able
to exercise freely.”
So, a pretty big promotion there, for St. Peter, on their
way to Caesarea Philipi.
But then, this week, just seven verses later in Matthew
chapter 16, the Lord refers to Peter as Satan: “Get behind me, Satan! You are
an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
One can hardly imagine a more serious rebuke. Peter you have become a stumbling block—an
obstacle to the will of God, an obstacle to the sacred mission of Jesus. Peter,
you are obstructing God as Satan does.
How so? When the Lord foretold how he must go to the cross,
suffer and die and then be raised, Peter sets his will at odds with Jesus. “May
God forbid you to do this,” he says.
Peter here insinuates that Jesus turn away from the cross, that
the He turn away from the mission to save humanity, that he turn away from his
commitment to love his people to the end because it might hurt.
The Lord says, “Get behind me Satan” because Peter was
siding not with God, but with God’s enemy, the one who desires not our
salvation but our damnation, the one who works to keep man in his fallen state,
who would see us deprived of God’s presence for all eternity, just like him.
“Peter, You are thinking as human beings do”, not as God does, what is "good, and pleasing, and perfect" as Paul writes in our second reading. What’s that
say about human ways of thinking? That we don’t always think with the mind of
God, in fact, sometimes our thoughts are downright Satanic.
Our thoughts are sometimes quite disordered, aren’t they?
Perverted thoughts. Violent thoughts. Selfish thoughts. And when we act on
these thoughts, we side not with God, but with Satan.
This tendency, this vulnerability is in all of us. It’s the part
of us that gives-in to pressure all too easily, a part of us that caves when
obedience to God requires effort. We see this all the way back in the garden of
Eden. At the foot of the Tree of Knowledge—Eve begins listening to that
voice—that Satanic voice that doesn’t force, but merely whispers that her own
will, her own strength, her own plan, could bring her happiness—that setting
her will in opposition to God’s could bring her fulfilment.
So, too with Adam. And with Adam, we see even less of a
struggle. When presented with the forbidden fruit from the hands of his wife,
we don’t even see an argument. We don’t see Adam calling to mind the command of
God given to him directly: “Do not eat of the tree,” God says, “or else you
will die”. Adam caves without any recorded resistance. How pitiful! And yet, are
we any better? St. Dominic Savio would say that “he would rather die than
commit sin.” How often we fail to exercise the slightest resistance!
Most of us are a lot like Peter. We have moments where we
profess our faith, our minds and hearts and lips are open to God’s truth. And
then we have moments of “thinking as human beings do” and fall to the
temptations whispered by the Enemy.
But we shouldn’t despair because of this. It’s the Christian
condition. We’re believers who also sin, sinners who also believe. We’re
imperfect. We’re all learning. That’s what it means to be a disciple. And God
loves us for it. Jesus died not for the perfect, but for the imperfect. But he
also expects that when we sin, we humbly admit it. We confess it. We seek to
amend our life—to change our thinking and behavior, just like Peter.
Following Peter’s story through the New Testament. He
stumbles and falls. He literally sinks into the sea when he takes his eyes off
Jesus. He runs away from the cross. He denies the Lord, thricely. Even after
the resurrection, scripture records Peter’s imperfections. He goes back to
fishing. He locks himself behind the doors of the upper room. Even after
Pentecost, Peter makes mistakes. Paul writes to the Galatians how when Peter
came to Antioch, Paul had to tell Peter face to face that he was wrong for
refusing to eat with the Gentile converts.
There’s even a Christian legend how when Peter finally
arrives in Rome, he flees out of fear of martyrdom, and it’s not until the Lord
appears to him personally, that Peter finally has the courage to carry his
cross.
“Get behind me” it was a strong rebuke. But in a sense, it
was also an invitation, wasn’t it? “Get behind me” is the proper place of the
disciple. Peter, a sinner, had stepped in front of Jesus, trying to direct him
away from the Cross. Jesus invites him back to his proper place, and he does.
Peter had placed himself in front of Christ, as if he knew
the path better than the Lord. Jesus tells him: get behind me. Take your proper
place again. You are not the master. You are the disciple. And that is where
all of us belong: not telling God what He should do, but behind Jesus,
following him wherever he leads. Following Jesus requires obedience, but brings
freedom. Following Jesus, requires humble admittance of sin, but brings mercy.
Following Jesus involves the cross, but leads to resurrection and eternal life.
We’re not to despair because we stumble, nor are we to
pretend that our sins and compromises are irrelevant—their disordered, wicked,
and at odds with God’s will. And through the teaching of the Church, the Lord
rebukes us. But rebuke is part of the solution. Peter’s story does not end with
the rebuke. It ends with sanctity—with the ultimate act of love for Jesus—the
witness of his life and the winning of the martyr’s crown.
Through that series of stumbling and repentance, continuing
to follow the Lord, Peter finally learned to think and act with the mind and
heart of Christ. May the Lord give us that same grace: to recognize where we
are thinking merely as human beings do, to repent with humility, and to follow
Christ faithfully, unto the cross and resurrection, for the glory of God and
the salvation of souls.
