Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time  

August 24, 2008.

Personal identity is crucial to happiness and well-being.  Coming to a knowledge of who one is can be a lifetime mission, but it is important to be searching in the right direction.  Others create an identity for us based on our achievements and our possessions or, in reality, on our failures and our poverty.  Some are seen to have made it while others are written off because they have not done so and are not likely to do so.  Such criteria of identity are particularly destructive when one applies them to oneself or to those one loves.  Possessions are very passing while achievements are often only targets for others to outdo.

Our true identity has a more solid foundation.  It is based on the fact that we are children of God, created in God’s image, with a role in life that no on else can fulfill.  To really know this in our heart, to live that way and to be able to share it with others is the high point of human destiny and is the road to unending happiness and love.  God slowly but surely leads us along that road if we are willing to listen to the Spirit living in our hearts and in our relationships.

It was by such powerful listening that Jesus came to a fuller realization of his own identity as Son of God and son of Mary; as human and divine.

Others saw him as a great miracle worker or even as a prophet back from the dead but, as we read in this weekend’s gospel, Peter was inspired to recognize Jesus for who he really was and to realize who he was himself in relation to Jesus.  It is a gift that will be given to us if we seek it and are open to receive it in this weekend’s Eucharist.

If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world, then you are truly blessed.  You are more than a creature of flesh and blood.  Like Simon, you deserve a new name.

Like Simon, you too are a new Peter, a new rock in the temple of God’s presence upon earth. Your faith will be a rock of foundation to give you strong roots to withstand the most severe storms of life. Your faith will bring you the keys to open and close the doors of life’s mysterious castle. You have the key to open God’s forgiveness and to lock away the terrors of guilt. Your key will open up the light of wisdom, understanding and knowledge: and lock out the powers of darkness.  By recognizing Jesus for who he really is in your own lives, you, too can be transformed just as Peter was into a disciple with unlimited possibilities for ministry and service.