4 August 2016 - revealed by the Father

[ Today's Readings ]

No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.

Instead, we say with Simon Peter:

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

This is not revealed to us by flesh and blood. We can't determine the truth of this statement by taking a survey. And even those people who strive to teach us the truth of it to the best of their ability can only teach us so much. They can only bring us to a certain point, the point of decision, where must accept or decline the invitation from the Father to know his Son.

For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.

This revelation sets us firmly upon the rock. It calls us to unity with everyone else who knows it. The deeply personal union of Christ and the believer is at the same time a union of the believer and Christ's Church. When we find out who Jesus is we learn to trust the authority he gives to the hierarchy of the Church precisely because that Church is the body of the one whom we now know.

I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

The trouble is that we have to keep learning this. We really want the one time conversion experience after which everything is OK forever and we live happily ever after. But this is not the nature of life in our time bound world. Even after we know who Jesus is there is still suffering. There is still the cross. Do we trust the revelation of the Father or do we let suffering cloud our knowledge of the truth of who Jesus is?

From that time on, 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.
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
“God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”
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.”

Yet hope remains. We are being led toward the final fulfillment of this promise when every tear will be wiped from our eyes. When this new and eternal day dawns we shall all know the LORD with a knowledge we can never lose and a law which can never be taken from our hearts.

So let us persist and persevere in our desire to know the LORD. We falter when the waves are high and the storm is fierce. But he always stands ready to welcome us back.

Give me back the joy of your salvation,
and a willing spirit sustain in me.