In this life, we meet all kinds of people. We get to know some of these people better than others, and we enter into relationships with some of them. These can take various forms: some people are acquaintances, some people become really good friends, some people become like family, and some people become our spouses, or our best friends, or people that we let into very intimate parts of our lives. Relationships evolve. And sometimes, the more we learn about a person, the more we like them, or love them. And sometimes the more we learn about a person, the more we know that we don’t want to get any closer. I can remember very well that when I was in college, I became friends with a guy from Virginia named Tim. And Tim was a pretty good guy. He was fun to be around. He had a strong Faith. He like to do a lot of the same things that I enjoy doing. And so it was easy to become friends. But after about a year and half of being friends with Tim, I found out that he had cancer. And all of a sudden, with this curve ball, everything became different. Tim had to drop out of college to get well. There was a lot less time to talk or to do things together. And maybe the biggest challenge was all of a sudden, all of us at the seminary were hit with the reality that maybe Tim wouldn’t be make it through the cancer. Tim’s sickness changed a lot of things for a lot of people, myself included. Tim would eventually go on to beat the cancer. But the changes caused by the cancer, weren’t reversible. Everybody’s life had changed. And your relationship with Tim either evolved and became something else, or, it simply disappeared with the cancer. Crosses can do that. Crosses can change everything and everybody.

Today, in our Gospel, we see St. Peter’s relationship with Jesus evolve. And like the situation with my friend, Tim, the big change is the Cross. St. Peter can handle all of Jesus’ teachings. He has enjoyed the miracles, and the exorcisms, and the sermons. And St. Peter has also, as we heard last week, come to the realization that Jesus is the Messiah. He can handle that too. All of this fit for St. Peter. He could make sense out of it. It fit into his plan and his thinking. But then this week, Jesus starts talking about the Cross. Jesus is very clear that He is talking about going to Jerusalem to die. He talks about suffering greatly. He talks about rejection. He talks about dying. And this doesn’t fit into St. Peter’s vision of things. He doesn’t want to see his friend die. This is not at all the way that St. Peter saw things evolving in their relationship. So Peter pulls Jesus aside, and he says, “This can’t happen. God forbid. This is not the way that I want the story to go.” And Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Whoa…….. How did this happen? How did St. Peter go from being the star pupil who gets appointed First Pope, to this week being equated with the Devil. It’s because this week, like Lucifer himself, St. Peter doesn’t want things God’s way. He wants things his way. And wasn’t that exactly the sin of Lucifer when he was expelled from Heaven. The Devil wanted to be god. The Devil wanted his own way. And today, that’s exactly what St. Peter is doing.

You see, in our Gospel text today, Jesus and St. Peter’s relationship is being re-defined. The threat of death does this again. Peter may have meant well, but he was out of line. The true disciple’s place is that of following in the way Christ has chosen, not in leading Christ in the way that we would like for Him to go. Even if that way is unappealing, God has got to be in charge.

Thus, sometimes, our relationship with Jesus must be re-defined. We all have our false concepts and expectations about Jesus. God sometimes corrects these by exposing us to new insights and realities that do not “fit” our previous understanding of who Jesus is and how God operates. Sometimes, we too are forced to re-think the issues of Faith, just as St. Peter was. Peter thought that Jesus was ruining a perfectly good ministry by getting Himself killed. But that’s not the way that Jesus saw it. God had a bigger plan!

Re-defining our relationship with Jesus, according to God’s plan, is never an easy thing. Instead, it is a slow and painful process. Even St. Peter was still wrestling with this on the night before Jesus died. He denied Jesus those three times because he still didn’t agree with where Jesus was going. We know that eventually St. Peter came to accept the Cross as an essential part of following Jesus, eventually dying upside down on a Cross himself. St. Peter “got behind” where he belonged, and allowed Jesus to redefine his notion of God. We need to do the same in our relationship with God. To follow Jesus is to let Jesus do the leading, even in those depressing and confusing times of our lives. We might not know where Jesus is leading us. But the Good News is, He does.

May God bless us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti… Pray for us !!!