Who do the crowds say that I am?
The crowds didn't understand who Jesus was then and they don't now. They only see a limited set of preconceived categories into which he might fit. Today these categories are often things like 'moral teacher' or 'spiritual leader'. We try to say that Jesus was basically an early version of Marx or that he was saying the same thing as the Buddha. None of this is an exact fit, even though there are ways in which all of them are at least a little bit accurate. Herod was smart enough to realize that Jesus was different from any category with which he was familiar. But he was not humble enough to allow Jesus to reveal himself to him.
Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter said in reply, “The Christ of God.”
He rebuked them and directed them not to tell this to anyone.
Peter allowed the revelation of identity of Jesus to be given to him from the Father by the Spirit. He did not insist on figuring Jesus out, on solving him like a mystery, or categorizing him like a new species. He didn't have an exist framework adequate to describe Jesus so he let Jesus himself supply the framework.
He said, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.”
Even after receiving revelation that Jesus was the Son of God we know that Peter did not fully grasp the implications. He got a sufficient dose of the revelation to know that it was worth trusting in and following Jesus. But when it came to the cross and to suffering he balked, and fell back into his old paradigms. No wonder that he and the other disciples weren't yet permitted to tell the world about Jesus. Even they themselves only got him in fits and starts.
He rebuked them and directed them not to tell this to anyone.
Immediately after Peter found out who Jesus was he was rebuked as a Satan for being an obstacle to Jesus on the way to his cross. How much more, then would the world misconstrue him if they didn't begin with the Father's revelation as their starting place? What Peter had been given by the Father was enough that, over time, through failure and perseverance, he would eventually come to trust Jesus fully, with his whole life. Without that revelation Jesus tends to look as though he is opposed to human flourishing, against pleasures and pursuits that seem harmless to those who still relying on egocentric thinking and the limited resources of merely human intelligence.
To overcome our deeply entrenched ways of thinking we need what God promised through the prophet Haggai. We need our paradigms sufficiently disrupted so that we can welcome the new data about himself that God wants to provide.
One moment yet, a little while,
and I will shake the heavens and the earth,
the sea and the dry land.
I will shake all the nations,
and the treasures of all the nations will come in,
And I will fill this house with glory,
says the LORD of hosts.
This shaking was precisely the cross and the resurrection of Jesus himself. It was this that finally qualified the disciples to spread the word about who Jesus was, because their old ideas and been finally and irreversibly exploded.
For us as Catholics, the Paschal mystery is not just a one time event in the past. It is something we live in the liturgical year, and even daily in the mass. We are called to enter in, to taste and see that we can believe what Jesus tells us. Suffering has been transformed, and now is made to serve us by helping to bring us to glory. Things are shaken so that the eternal can be revealed.
Greater will be the future glory of this house
than the former, says the LORD of hosts;
And in this place I will give you peace,
says the LORD of hosts!
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