24-Sunday

24th Sunday in ordinary time.

Dear friends in Christ, I am happy to welcome you all for today’s Holy Mass, every time we come to Church, we join the apostles and all the holy men and women and profess our faith saying, “Jesus, you are the Christ, you are the Only Son of God, the beginning and the end. Everything comes from you and ends in you”, every time we come to church we celebrate our discipleship in Christ our Lord and dear friends, every time we come to Church, the messianic secret is being told again and again to deepen our faith in God through Christ our Lord.
1. In today’s gospel, Jesus is with His disciples in the region of Caesarea Philippi, a non-Jewish region like last weekend gospel and He then asks His disciples what people think about Him. It is not because He wants to be identified or be known by all. Today, we face so many challenges because of identity issues or problems. Some people do anything to be recognized by others. There are many physical and emotional development stages and when a person did not have a proper physical and emotional growth according to their age, and then they will have identity crisis. So in order to get others attention, they will do anything they can. And our Lord Jesus Christ in today’s gospel asks His disciples what people think about Him. It is not because He has identity crisis. It is because He is almost at the middle of His public Mission and after doing all His miracles, wonders, healing and preaching to all, He wants to know the mind of the people. And the disciples said, “ People think that you are Elijah one of the Old Testament prophet who preached about the love of God to all and invited people to come back to God almighty. He healed the sick and raised people to life. Others thought that He was John the Baptist, whose birth was different from other human beings and who lived in a desert meditation upon the mysteries of God and he invited people to come back to God and others thought that Jesus was one of the prophets. Who is a prophet? A prophet is the one who foretells the coming events mainly spiritual and divine events. Since people saw all the miracles of Christ, they thought that he was chosen by God in a special way to bring the Good News; even today the Jews and Muslim consider Christ as a holy prophet of God.
2. Then Jesus our Lord asks the same question to His disciples saying, ‘who do you think that I am?’ because He wants to prepare His disciples to the coming events. Jesus who is God who became human to save humanity and He came to fulfill the divine will. The one who descended from heaven has to ascend to heaven. No one can live here permanently because from where we come to there we have to return and Jesus has to fulfill His mission and has to go back to His Father. And that is why He asked His disciples and Simon Peter who in the name of all the apostles came forward and said, ‘You are the Christ”. The anointed one, the living God, the alpha and Omega. You and the Only Son of God. Dear friends, when we recognize Christ from our personal experience, then our approach towards the world, people and His creatures will be so different. We may join the apostles and we may join the Holy men and women and we may join others and say, “Jesus, you are the Christ and the Only Son of God” but that can not be our personal experience and we should have personal experience of the Holy divine to experience His love and kindness. Unless we have at least some personal experience, we cannot find God in anything we do.

3. When the apostles recognized the divinity in Christ and when they identified His holiness, Jesus revealed the Messianic Secret to them. The Bible says that not every one who is called is chosen but only a few. And the chosen apostles were given the blessings to know the secret. The Messianic Secret is that the Son of man should under go great suffering and be handed over to the elders, the chief priest, and temple Pharisees and the Scribes and they will kill Him but on the third day, Jesus will come back to life”. When He revealed the messianic secret, the apostles were so shocked because it was unacceptable for them. Jesus is the Messiah, the Only Son of God and how come he be killed. And that is why Simon Peter and all other apostles tried to say, “No” to the Messianic Secret and Jesus said, ‘you are approaching things with human mind but divine plan is different.

4. Conclusion: Dear friends, God’s plan is different from human. People struggle to accept so many things in their lives because they judge them according to their own human standard but when we pray to God and in His presence we begin to think, we will understand things in a different way. Let us try our best to understand that God’s way is not our way. His way is full of love and compassion and His way is full of forgiveness and kindness and let us experience divine love and kindness in what we do. Amen.