He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, ”You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Matthew 16-17.
During Lent we meditate on many questions, but perhaps no one more important than the one Christ posed to his disciples – “Who do you say I am.” We receive answers from others such as, “He was God, he was a good man, he was a wise teacher, or he was a prophet.” Other faiths define him as well as a prophet, a wise philosopher, or doer of good deeds. In his own times he was known as “the carpenter, Son of Joseph, Galilean, even John the Baptist or Elijah. Jesus praises Peter not for just getting it right, if at all, but getting the answer from introspection and from God. Peter ignored what others said and sought the answer himself. He searched his own heart and found the answer. This answer was uniquely Peter’s, as the answers we seek are unique to us.
This Lent we pose many questions, and we are instructed by this passage to seek the answers not from others, but from ourselves. As we are different, so may the answer to the same question be. The answers we seek lie within.
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