Mass readings for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Jeremiah 20.7-9 Psalm 63.1-8 Romans 12.1-2 Matthew 16.21-27
What Jesus says to Peter in today’s gospel is absolutely shocking. He associates with Satan his most trusted disciple, his chief lieutenant, the man he declares to be the “rock” upon which the Church will be built.
I know today we often quote this famous line from the gospels in jest. Hey, I’m on a diet and you offer me ice cream (and you’ve done it in a teasing way). So, my response is: get behind me Satan! And we have a chuckle about it.
But there is something quite serious about what Jesus says, and he is in earnest; and that rebuke of Peter, that identifying the chief apostle with all that is opposed to Christ cannot be taken lightly, and must serve as a caution for us today.
What Peter did that was so grievous was to stand in the way of Jesus’ mission; to tempt Jesus away from what he needed to do in preference for the worldly project that the apostles had in mind. And you’ll recall that what they were after was the political deliverance of Israel.
Now, that captivity was understood not to be simply political, the problem of getting the Romans out of their lives; it was also seen as spiritual and involved the religious leadership of Jerusalem as well. But ultimately, it was about worldly power, the control of institutions and government.
Indeed, the Romans and the religious establishment saw Jesus in these terms – a threat to their authority, to the social and political situation that put them on top. That is, both sides, if we want to make a simple division between those propping up the corrupt system of power and those opposed to it, saw Jesus as a potential catalyst for revolution. The powerful feared a bloody rebellion, and I imagine the apostles were hoping for a relatively peaceful transformation of the political and religious order; and those who looked on, the multitudes, anxiously looked for some indication as to which way things were tending and then to figure out whose side to take.
However, for Jesus, this is not the work he had come to do; his task is to offer a redeeming sacrifice, but also show us that God is more powerful than death, and so, we ought to trust in Him. He takes on our sins, and removes them, he takes on death and he defeats it. The matter of who sits on the throne is irrelevant to this.
What is relevant today is whether or not those who hold the seats of power are themselves ruled by sin and fear of death, or are they free in Christ and so able by grace to live and to govern virtuously. What is relevant today is whether or not you and I, and all humanity, live in fear of death and in slavery to sin. Are we availing ourselves of the remedy which is faith is Christ?
So, when it comes to considering the Church today, the body of Christ in the world, we must ask if we are properly focussed on the essential work of freeing people from the power of sin and death, or are we being pulled away from it and indulging that impulse of Peter to pursue lesser, worldly goals.
And these can be worthy goals: end poverty, clean up the environment, end war, cure all diseases, and so on.
You might be thinking, “oh my, Father, do you mean we shouldn’t be feeding the hungry, helping the poor, working for peace, etc.?”
No, not at all. But to be clear about Catholic teaching, this isn’t, so to speak, our core business.
And you may be familiar with the world of business consultancy, those gurus of commerce who diagnose the ills of major corporations and small businesses. It’s pretty universal in the advice we hear from them: know what your business is, what is the core function of your enterprise, get that right first, and be aware that the more you stray from it, the more apt it will be that you’ll start to fail in everything you’re doing.
The Church has received its great commission from our Lord: “Go (therefore) and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
All other activity of the Church corporately and as individual members is subordinate to this. Yet so many parishes, dioceses, and individuals get pulled “off mission” as they pursue those activities that win them worldly accolades, and even the praise of the faithful because the Church is showing how it makes a difference in the world.
And to be fair to those who do take on the social work of the Church, what we refer to as the corporal acts of mercy: the feeding and clothing of the poor, care of widows and orphans, health care for those in need, the provision of shelter to the homeless, and so on; these do reflect historically grounded ministries of the Church. After all, we have Jesus’ own teaching that “what you do for the least… you do also for me.”
The Church is the effective originator of the modern hospital; it invented the whole idea of child welfare; it has always cared for the poor. Yet it did so in conjunction with its core mission. And to the degree it abandons the mandate of Christ so as assuage those critics who feel it inappropriate to evangelize people through their material need, to make listening to the gospel the condition for receiving help, it is actually being unfaithful. When we give a cup of cool water the thirsty man, we do so in the name of Christ, and so should that be known.
The drift away from evangelization and active teaching of the faith has been quite gradual, but a drift of two or more centuries can account for how we got to where we are today. One can put this down to the Church’s struggle to adjust to modernity, the industrial revolution, the globalization of culture, economics and politics.
We can go all the way back to the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII published in 1891, Rerum Novarum in which Leo addressed the revolutionary changes going on in the world which are still being worked out today. This document is widely regarded as the foundation of current Catholic social doctrine. It was a drawing up of principles so the that Church would keep herself from being pulled too much to one side or the other in the then struggle between capital and labour, between the advocates of socialism and capitalism; affirming the rights and obligations that pertained to both sides. For example, the Catholic Church almost uniquely affirms a right to private property; but it also insists upon the obligation of employers to offer fair wages, time off, a safe and moral environment for work. At that time, the Church’s role as moral arbiter and educator in Christian principles was both expected and largely unchallenged, even if Protestant churches may have bristled at papal authority, they endorsed what Leo wrote in the main.
When Saint John Paul II celebrated the centenary of Rerum Novarum with his own encyclical, the role of the Church was very much being challenged, as it continues to be today. And he very clearly set his understanding of our obligations with respect to social justice in the context of an urgent need to evangelize a civilization that was fast turning secular and forgetful of Christ. He wrote,
“Now, as then, we need to repeat that there can be no genuine solution of the “social question” apart from the Gospel, and that the “new things” (the challenges of the modern industrial era) can find in the Gospel the context for their correct understanding and the proper moral perspective for judgment on them.” (Centessimus Annus 5)
In one of the standard textbooks on Catholic Social Teaching, Church, State, and Society (2010), its author J. Brian Benestad explains that the Church’s position is that a culture converted to Christ will be naturally more just and caring and many social ills will be ameliorated. For example, healthy families with fathers and mothers committed through the sacrament of marriage to lives of love and mutual sacrifice provide the best environment for children. We know from countless social studies that criminality in boys and promiscuity in girls predominates in fatherless households. We know that lives bereft of serious spiritual discipline lead to mindless consumerism, and that gives us the problem of over-consumption, and the pollution of our environment and the ill-health of people who live amidst toxins in the cheap manufactures they buy, and indeed, consume physically in the cheap, ultra-processed foods that are seen as a primary cause of the current epidemic of obesity.
Now, we shouldn’t abandon the work we do with the victims of our civilizational dysfunction. We need ministers for those in half-way houses transitioning out of prison and, hopefully, to a productive life. We need to operate shelters for single moms and their kids so as to ensure that the suffering they’ve already had isn’t further compounded. We need to keep up the food banks and the meal programs, in the hopes that decent food will make its way onto the plates of the poor who need good nutrition if they’re ever going to escape poverty. But we need to recognize that the source of so much of what we see isn’t the result of natural catastrophe and unfortunate accident, but the result of living apart from God, mistaking vice for individual freedom, and regarding virtue as an evil restraint on our liberty.
There is so much to do; and we start from where we are today, just as Jesus did in our gospel today: for there he was in Caesarea Phillipi, a local expression of what Roman Hellenistic civilization was about: that town a place of pagan debauchery, a place of gambling houses, brothels, orgiastic feasting, of exploitation of the poor, of indifference in the rich, of superficial spirituality, of religious ignorance. It was in that place that according to legend were the very gates to the underworld, the gates of hell. Jesus brought the twelve to that spot, and mindful of all they’d seen there, he told them this will not win, the gates of hell cannot prevail.
And they all said “amen to that”; Peter famously confessed Jesus to be the Christ. But no sooner than Jesus praised him and God for this revelation, than Peter failed and unwittingly took Satan’s side in the struggle.
Jesus did heal the sick, he fed the poor, but that is not why he came. He came to die and rise again, to be defeated on a Friday to emerge victorious Sunday morning. He came for us to learn from that; and to make his death and resurrection ours; to make our defeats the stuff of victory through faith in him. We must teach our children this, and remember it ourselves, learn from our Lord, and teach it on to others.
Amen.