Once upon a time, there was an irreligious farmer who gloried in his irreligion. He wrote a letter to a local newspaper in these words: “Sir: I have been trying an experiment with a field of mine. I plowed it on Sunday, the day the Christians observe as the day of rest. I planted it on Sunday, the sabbath. I harvested it on Sunday. I carted the crop home to the barn on Sunday. And now, Mr. Editor, what is the result? This October I have more bushels to the acre from the field than any of my neighbors have.” He expected applause from the editor, who was not known to be a religious man himself. When he opened the paper the next week, there, sure enough, was his letter printed just as he had sent it, but underneath it was the short but significant sentence: “God does not always settle accounts in October.”
Sunday after Sunday, we have seen in St. Matthew’s Gospel how St. Peter has played a more and more significant role. Jesus chooses him from among the Twelve for the moment in today’s Gospel (Matthew 16, 13-20). From the impulsive, unschooled, self-preserving, and impetuous fisherman, God will raise up the rafters of a Church that will see twenty centuries and more. And none of this happens because Peter is great, but because God is! That is what today’s Gospel is about: what God can do with us.
St. Peter often stumbled, he denied Jesus three times, he put his foot in his mouth, so to speak, more times than we can count. He was living proof that not much can be built on flesh, as frail and uncertain as human beings are. He was also living proof that God doesn’t settle all accounts at once. Through the Holy Spirit, which gives the Church its breath, all things are possible. In fact, the Reign of God keeps on coming – “on earth as it is in heaven.”
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Let us ask ourselves today and throughout the coming week: When and how do we show ourselves to be disciples of Jesus, or give witness to Him in public? If we let Jesus’ question from Matthew 16 resonate in our hearts (“Who do you say that I am?”) will it influence how ready we are to testify to Him in some way or other?
