Mt 16,13-19 – Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles – Solemnity
It is beautiful that, on the feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the Gospel makes us listen to Peter’s profession of faith. But before his answer there is a decisive question from Jesus: «People, who say he is the Son of man?». It’s not a curiosity. It is the starting point of every authentic Christian testimony.
Jesus invites us first of all to look at the world as it is. To observe what people think, hope, fear and suffer. To ask ourselves which face of God lives in the hearts of the people we meet every day. Many imagine a distant God, others a severe God, still others think they can live as if God did not exist. Faith is not born by ignoring these questions, but by allowing ourselves to be provoked by them.
Only after having listened to what lives in the hearts of men, Jesus asks the decisive question: «But who do you say I am?». This is where the gospel becomes personal. It is not enough to know what others think of Christ. We need to take a stand. Faith does not consist in repeating a learned formula, but in recognizing with one’s whole life that Jesus is truly “the Christ, the Son of the living God”. Jesus does not ask Peter to convince others with irresistible arguments. She asks him to be a witness. When a person truly encounters Christ, he changes the way he looks, loves, rejoices, faces suffering and even experiences death. It is this transformation that makes the Gospel credible.
Peter and Paul are proof of this. Very different in character, history and sensitivity, they followed different paths, but both let Christ become the center of their existence. This is why they changed the world. Not with power, not with force, but with the testimony of a hope that no human power could have offered. This is why today’s celebration asks us what hope we are experiencing.
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