Sunday, August 24, 2014

Dreams, assumptions, illusions

Hold on to your dreams! Hold on to your ideals! Beginning a new life, a new project, means bringing fresh thinking to something we've admired from afar. It means considering your goal in a new light, acquiring a different way of thinking. In the seminary, new men arrive with assumptions about seminary and the priesthood which quickly grow confusing and uncertain. It doesn't take long to become disillusioned about the life of a seminarian. If you think we all walk around with our hands folded in prayer, it comes as a surprise to realize that we are more likely to be working our electronic devices.

So we begin to wonder if this is the place for us. I can never emphasize enough that the reason we stay is never the reason we arrive. You will be challenged about your ideals all through your college life. Sometimes, perhaps often, you will have to find better reasons for continuing your formation than those for which you came.

Calvin tells Hobbes in the comic strip, "I go to school but I never learn what I want to know." Some ideals you will adjust as you gain knowledge and experience. Some ideals you will abandon because they no longer apply. Some ideals will grow stronger. The key is our openness to God's will. Are we ready to look at our new lives from God's perspective or from ours alone? We constantly have to question who is in charge - do we only see things our way or do we see them God's way?

Today's Gospel (Matthew 16: 13 - 20, Peter's profession of faith) is so familiar that we can be tempted to idealize it and not look more deeply. As a younger Catholic, I was sure this Scripture passage proved beyond doubt that Peter was the first pope but my Protestant friends weren't convinced and I didn't have enough knowledge to explain it. This reading does nothing of the sort, of course. It does show us that Jesus appointed Peter for the most important leadership role among the Apostles. But being a pope wasn't a question that came into being until after Jesus died. Many bishops in the first years of Christianity had the title 'Pope' but it wasn't until nearly the fifth century with Pope St. Leo the Great that the title was exclusive to the bishop of Rome.

What the Gospel does here reminds us that it is really more important that we focus on Jesus' question. Who do you and I say that He is? Our concern should not be Peter but Jesus. Are our minds and hearts open to hearing God's will here. Apparently Peter's mind and heart were. It is less important that Peter is the chosen one, that Peter is called the first pope, than that Jesus chose Peter to play a special role among the Apostles. Peter is the one who recognizes the hand of God here and thus Peter receives recognition none of the others do. Peter was open to hearing God's word as it was and not as Peter thought it was. It is Jesus who calls.

But the emphasis here is not on Peter. Peter is only as important as his recognition of Christ as the Messiah. Christ is the one who has come to save Israel. Christ is the Son of God. We may want to use this Scripture to beat our non-believing friends over the head but be careful. They may come back and tell you to read this Scripture in context. The passage that follows here in Matthew's Gospel is the one in which Jesus begins speaking to his disciples about his death and resurrection. In that reading the chosen Peter tells Jesus that he would never allow that to happen to him. Jesus calls him Satan.

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