22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Last week in the Gospel Peter said to Jesus You are the Christ the son of the Living God and Jesus said to Peter “Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.”
This week Peter said to Jesus in response to his revelation about the suffering to come, “’Heaven preserve you, Lord,’ he said, ‘this must not happen to you.’ Jesus answered ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do.’
What a change from one conversation to the next! Peter is a wonderful leader for us to follow because he so often gets it really right and also really wrong. In the first instance Peter is listening to God and in the second he isn’t, he’s listening to his own fears and his fears for Jesus. He recognises that Jesus is the Christ, the long S Messiah, but a suffering Christ is not part of his plan for the future.
Very often we have to turn to God and let go of our plans for the future. This is happening to everyone during the Covid crisis. Some have lost those dear to them and with that loss they lose their picture of what the future would hold and other have lost jobs and have had to reimagine what their new identity will be. For the rest of us we have lost control of our ability to even plan a holiday with confidence and there’s an underlying worry that we might catch this virus. We are forced to live in the present because we’re not sure from one day to the next what will happen.
I believe that we need more than ever to trust in God, to put one foot in front of the other each day, to seek help when we need it and to give help when we can. Like Peter we are confused at times and don’t understand what’s happening in our lives or in the world. But also like Peter we are not alone, Jesus is with us in our confusion. Maybe we could sit with Jesus for a few moments each day allowing Him to heal our hearts and to give us strength for whatever lies ahead.
Máirín Keegan