XXIV Dominica per Annum (B)
Zola Predosa, September 13th 2009
1. Dear brothers and sisters, the evangelical page divinely teaches us about our faith, and so about our relationship with God.
Our faith, dear friends, is first of all the acknowledgement of a person: the person of Christ. The real believer doesn't limit himself/herself to repeat, to think what people say Christ is. The real believer recognizes 'the Christ' in Jesus, which means the One who God has sent as our unique Saviour.
The real qualitative step, the real difference between the acknowledgement of the person of Christ made by the believer and what the non-believer thinks of or says about Jesus, consists of this. For non believers, Jesus is 'one of the prophets', which means he belongs to a series, a class or category of persons: 'one of...'. It was said: 'one of the founders of religion', '...of teachers of moral', '...of big social revolutionaries'.
For the believer instead Jesus is absolutely unique; He is not a part of any series; He is an 'absolutely singular case'. He is 'the Christ'. He is God who made himself a man.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is our faith! To be Christian depends on this act of acknowledgement of the person of Christ: not mainly based upon living in a certain way and not in a different one. It is not the behaviour to define an existence as Christian. It is the faith in Jesus Christ.
Let's never forget it, dear friends, especially today. We are in fact daily tempted by thinking that all religions are equally functional to the establishment of an ethical universal code, to a universe of values shareable by all people. What is not functional to this aim, is thought to be simply debatable: neither true nor false. The relation with Christ, real central axis of all Christianity, is the acknowledgement of the truth of His person.
2. But the evangelic page continues with a dialogue between Jesus and Peter who has confessed the real faith, that becomes a real and proper quarrel.
What does Jesus rebuke Peter? ‘you don't think according to God, but according to the men.' About what did Peter not think 'according to God'? About the redeeming mission of Jesus.
The apostle had recognized with truth that Jesus was the Messiah sent by God. But he had immediately registered this divine illumination in and according to his mentality.
He had reduced the thought of God to the measure of his thinking. In the sense Peter was not able to conceive that Jesus, sent by God, had 'to suffer a lot, and to be criticized, and then to be killed.'
Dear friends, this quarrel between Jesus and Peter introduces us to a very deep comprehension of our faith.
To believe, my dear, doesn't mean simply to recognize the real identity of Jesus, and then, for the rest, to continue thinking as before. Faith has to penetrate, and innerve itself in our way of thinking, estimating, judging. As Christians we are called to adjust our thought to Christ’s about everything. The separation in our person and in our life between believing and thinking is an important spiritual desease of the christian. Peter believed in Jesus, but he didn't think according Jesus.
How does faith become thought? How can we arrive to have the thought of Christ? Dear friends, the school where one learns to think according to Christ is the Church.
It is in the docility to the Magistry of the Church that we are gradually lead to think as Christ, about big daily problems of our life.
You have heard what the Salm says: 'I shall walk in the presence of God in the land of the living’. Dear friends: what a big thing is walking in the presence of God! That is, to. in His light. It is the obedience of faith that spreads the the light of God down into our darkness. Let's open our mind to it; let's not put up resistance nor back out. Faith that becomes our way of thinking shows us the way of life.
La traduzione, non rivista dal Cardinale Caffarra, è di Stefania Floridia
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