Tell God about God
If someone asks us a question, he usually wants to achieve a specific goal: to add something to his knowledge or check the condition of ours. But do the questions of Christ: "Who do people say that I am?" and "Who do you think I am?" are such? Is the creation really supposed to fill the gaps in the knowledge of its Creator? Or perhaps we are dealing here with an examination that His disciples were to pass through.
However, these questions are not about the story of Jesus of Nazareth: the account of the Star of Bethlehem and the three wise men, the search in the temple and his forays into the desert, the number of healings and the exact timing of the stages of evangelization. Jesus wants something different: he wants to hear from our lips a story that we tell only to Him and only for Him, completely disinterestedly, over a neatly constructed statement of sufficient number of pious phrases and with a constructive conclusion. He wants man to face the enormity of knowledge about God and see how small and inappropriate is every word in which we want to enclose Him. Getting to know the weakness of our own story about Him and experiencing the emptiness of our words, he opens us to a story that does not come from us, but from Him who is the only one who can express God Himself. For without the Spirit, we will remain mute, even in the midst of a sea of words.
The courage of such a story is also the courage to face self-knowledge. By receiving knowledge from God, man begins to see himself in the way how He looks at man. Man learns not only to tell stories, but also to look at himself with God's eyes. For our gaze not only judges, humiliates, but can also condemn. On the other hand, God's gaze always saves. The gift of God's eyes, the gift of seeing the world as He looks at it, is always a gift of saving - also man from himself. "And who do you think I am?" - asks Christ and we have nothing else to do but face the story of God about God.
And for a moment let's look at Peter. When we look at Peter on the pages of the Gospels, we see an image of an ambiguous man: On the one hand, Peter was a confident man - he confesses with certainty and conviction that Jesus is the Messiah. He is a man of great ideals and great declarations. But also, Peter is a man who keeps stumbling over himself. He cannot see himself through the eyes of Jesus. He has his own idea of Jesus - it is easy for him to admit that Jesus is the Messiah. However, when Jesus tells him what kind of Messiah he will be: suffering and rejected, despised and trampled - then Peter tries to turn Jesus away from His path. Peter wants to be strong and hard as a rock, with the strength of Jesus, but the strength of Jesus he imagined humanly - thanks to Jesus Peter will finally mean something - probably Jesus will liberate Israel politically, and then Peter, Jesus' closest associate, will become a minister in his government.
This ambiguity is in all of us. The masters of the spiritual life point to the inner tear that runs inside everyone's heart. They call them "real me" and "false me". There is something real in each of us, when we are ready to surrender our whole life to God in the moment of rapture, but after a while we have thoughts like Peter: does it make sense? How much will it cost me? Or maybe it could be easier - without humiliation, unpleasantness or suffering ...
But notice that Peter does not become discouraged with himself and humbly asks the Lord: Accept my littleness, Lord, take my heart as it is. The most important thing in this constant spiritual battle that we fight with ourselves is not to get discouraged. Someone said: Discouragement is the only failure. And it really is. If we succumb to discouragement, we are already defeated by the evil spirit who will whisper into our ear: “You see, you wanted good, and it turned out badly as usual! You're good for nothing!”.
Jesus is not discouraged by the attitude of Peter and addresses his call also to him: Peter, if you really want to come after me, deny yourself, your false self, fight him and don't give in to discouragement. I am with you and I support you in this fight.
And we know that ultimately Peter won the victory over himself - he overcame what imprisoned him: instead of pride came humility, instead of telling Jesus what to do, he listen to Jesus, instead of seeking security for his life, came the sacrifice of life - we remember that according to tradition, Peter gave his life for Jesus, nailed to the cross upside down.
And we could only ask: Peter, have you ever regretted following Jesus? Let us listen to his answer in our hearts and let it become a guide for us how to live our lives.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george