Now, overwhelmed in their weakness, confusion, and fear, they are confronted by the Risen Christ. This led to a shattering breakthrough of their Jesus question. Now they began to understand that the true identity of Jesus will be found in the troubled heart. These hearts were indeed the true battlefield of good and evil, sin and grace, ambition and surrender. Only Jesus could set them free to begin the journey of love.
No longer could they look at Jesus as their free ticket to security, prosperity and privilege. Now, they had to re-compute the whole message of Jesus as the Suffering Messiah and not the Messiah of exclusivity and elitism.
The great story is not the obvious failure of the disciples but their humble acceptance of the need to change and enter again into the teachings of Jesus through the filter of the death and resurrection.
In the end, unlike the rich young man, they did not walk away, but they stayed faithful to the struggle. They eventually let go of their broken dreams and exaggerated ambition. They began to respond anew to Jesus’ fundamental question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29)
Only in a tedious assessment of their lives, did they grasp the depth of the message and the totality of the cost. It took them a long time to “get it all”. The final step on this long journey was to grasp how little they appreciated the wonder and beauty of Jesus’ presence, teachings and love in their three years of sharing, intimacy and discerning the mystery of his identity.
The gospels are structured so that we, like Peter and the other disciples, meet Jesus in the wonders of his ministry. We are called to receive his teachings and witness his healings. We are challenged to respond to his radical message of forgiveness and inclusion. We are invited to ponder the wonder of his compassion. We are invited to enter into the stories. It helps to see ourselves as the person who gains sight, the leper who is cleansed, the paralytic who is forgiven and healed.
In this way of reading the Gospels with a hungering heart, we are led to the same critical question that ultimately rattled the first disciples: “Who do you day that I am?” (Mk 8;29) There is no more important question and challenge in our life. Who is Jesus for us?
For the disciples and us, the transforming power of the message comes slowly. We are on the road but our encounter with Jesus is always partial and incomplete. We are growing in awareness of our personal limits that opens us ever-so-slowly to the mercy of God. The encounter with Jesus always comes at a price, and a price that continues to escalate. At the heart of the encounter with Jesus is a transition moving from our vision for happiness, from our priorities, to Jesus’ vison and call. This conversion process repeats itself at deeper levels as we stay faithful with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem.
Deep personal prayer leads to an ever-expanding appreciation of Jesus’ identity, and in turn, what is God’s will for us. A new and more profound experience of prayer, flowing from this conversion, empowers us to live in a way that is more and more guided by God’s will. Eventually, it calls us to say no to all that is not God. This is only possible as we grow painfully aware of the depth of our weakness and brokenness. The need to be purified and transformed becomes overwhelmingly transparent. This necessary change can happen in this life by faithfully following Jesus. If not, it will happen in the next life. It is called purgatory. We learn slowly but surely that it is all about the mercy of God. The story of our lives is the story of God’s mercy.
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