On Jesus' passion and discipleship

Today's gospel is a continuation of last Sunday's gospel reading regarding Peter's confession about our Lord Jesus Christ, which we got from Matt. 16:13-20. Today's gospel comes from Matt. 16: 21-27.

"21 Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. 22 Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, "God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."

23 He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do." 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

25 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? 27 For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father's glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct."

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Like I said many times before, this is one Scripture passage that I have memorized for the reason that it is the Scriptural roots of the Catholic Church because at the beginning of this passage, which was last Sunday's gospel reading Peter was asked by our Lord who do his disciples think that he is? Peter said, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God."

Because of his reply, our Lord told Peter in front of his disciples, "Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah for flesh and blood has not revealed that to you, but my Heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." This is the scripture passage where our Lord Jesus Christ bestowed upon Peter the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. That's why St. Peter is considered the First Pope in a long line of Popes in the Catholic Church's two thousand year history.

So if you were on Peter's shoes, how would you react when right after installing him with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ then comes up with his first ever prediction of his passion and death when he said, "Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised."

Of course Peter would have none of these words. He didn't even realize that our Lord Jesus was giving them a prediction of his passion and death. This is why Peter said, "God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you." Instead our Lord rebuked Peter saying, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."  Indeed, we think as human beings do because we just can't fathom the depth of God's love. We only understand human type of love.

In this prediction, our Lord doesn't only tell them that he would suffer and die in the hands of the elders, the chief priests and scribes, but that he would be raised on the third day. This is the first prediction of his resurrection and nobody noticed! The other first prediction was when our Lord said, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." The cross would become the most know sign of the entire Christian world.

I'm sure that Judas Escariot who was also there with the disciples must have heard this prediction… and that later when he sold our Lord for 30 pieces of silver, he most probably already had an idea that the Lord would die by the cross. But then despite all the miracles that they all witnessed that our Lord did, giving sight to the blind, the healing of the cripple, his exorcising demons and the miracle of the Loaves, they never took the prediction of our Lord with any seriousness until it really happened to him.

We Catholics today are so lucky, we have the Old and the New Testament so we can read those books and easily understand God's salvific plan for the human race to be restored to his kingdom in Paradise. But for the disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, even if they have an idea that he was the Messiah who was prophesied to save Israel, they still could not accept that Christ would be a different kind of Saviour… that he would be a suffering God. That's because we human beings do not think as God does.

Yes, it is difficult for us to fathom the depth of God's love for his creation…that he would allow his only begotten Son to be born of a sinless woman so that the Word of God becomes flesh and dwells amongst us. But his true mission was to die for our sins… so that he would conquer death and would be raised in glory on the third day. The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is the most glorious event in our Christian faith.