“Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny himself”
(Mt. 16,21-27)
Rev. Alexander Diaz
Today’s gospel is a direct continuation of last week’s, it shows us a Peter that turns from a hero to becoming a stumbling stone. All caused by his inability to see what is going on from God’s view. In his simplicity, he allows his feelings to dominate the reality of his life. Jesus began to show them that He had to go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, be killed and on the third day be raised.
These ideas made no sense in the heads and minds of the twelve, since suffering and death were not in their priority list, least of all the characteristics in reference to the Messiah. Jesus began to openly speak to them. He talks to them about the suffering and the death that awaited Him, also talked to them about the resurrection, most of them saw this thru a fatalist mentality.
Peter, being the impulsive one among them, trying to be the Teachers counselor, took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him, saying: “God forbid, Lord. No such thing shall ever happen to you”. (Mt. 16, 21-27). Jesus’ reply to Peter was very harsh: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do”.
Surprisingly this hard answer of our Lord to Peter, more so, when a few moments before Peter had been named as the great Leader of the Church and Jesus had congratulated him for recognizing him as the Messiah. That is why Jesus calls Peter, “Satan” and accused him of thinking as human beings do and not as God does.
God’s thinking is very different from the world’s way of thinking. The problem is that we, human being, instead of adapting our thoughts to God’s, we want God to adapt to ours. Peter with his natural wisdom and the unique comfort of the human being invites us to look for the most comfortable position.
Peter thinks as many of us do, he thinks that suffering is not necessary or significant, that it is totally negative to the human being and that is an obstacle for the development of the present life. Even though the Lord’s answer is sharp, there is in the language used by Jesus, a lesson to be learned, where he wants to let us know that everything has a different meaning if seeing thru the eyes of God.
When we think that this or other thing happening in our lives are a certain misfortune, humanly speaking, we have to look at the deepest significance where it is shown to us God’s will for our existence. A true follower of Jesus, follows Him thru pain, with the honor of being a proven and determined Christian.
It should not be the other way around, the one who follows Jesus only to be honored to be His follower, but not by participating in His pain and suffering. Jesus sets certain specific conditions for His followers:
-Deny himself = this means to forget ourselves, which is not easy to do. It is to tell my ego, which we all have inside and that inclines us to be self-centered, autonomous and self-sufficient, we do not want to follow our own plans, and least of all our own interests, instead we want to depend for all and in all on God, and not to suffer at all. I think that the greatest obstacle to follow Jesus is not the circumstances of our lives, nor the people around us, the greatest obstacle to follow Him is ourselves. It is too hard for us to allow God to guide or direct our personalities.
- Take up the cross = this is not to take, in a masochistic way, our daily problems. It is to accept our cross for Christ with the necessary optimism and willingly, embracing it respectfully, even though many do not understand the reason why we embrace the things we do. It is to embrace the cross with passion and joy, even though it is heavy and weight us down.
- Follow me = This means to walk in God’s rhythm, the rhythm of His will. Not the other way around, most of the time we want God to walk at our rhythm, this is what happened to Peter, it is not what we want, but what God wants to put in front of us for our personal, moral and spiritual development.
To follow Christ, you have to lose your life. We have to renounce to what seems to be life, renounce to what the world present us as if it was the most important thing in life. Pleasure, power, wealth, success, riches, comfort, satisfactions, attachments, all these things, some of which are licit, they are all part of “that life” to which we have to renounce in order to be able to embrace the cross that Jesus presents us.
If we are willing to lose all that, we will obtain the Real Life, in other words, the one that await for us after we leave this earth. If by contrast, we find all those things and others, more important and mistakenly try to save them as if they were the only thing in life, we can take the risk of losing it all: what is here and what is there, the life and The Life. For “¿What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mt 16,26)
Amen!!
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