St. Peter just can't seem to get a break in the Gospels. If he makes an insightful statement, he has to blow it in the next paragraph. If he professes undying devotion and faith, it is only a few short sections later that he blows it. In today's Gospel selection for Mass (Mk. 8.31-38, read it here), he and Ss. James and John have just (literally) come down from their high on Mt. Tabor and the Transfiguration, and full of the wonder of the moment he is taken aback by Jesus seemingly out of nowhere talking about His betrayal and execution. Now, St. Peter was not privy to the conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, he had just seen Jesus transformed to reveal celestial glory, and there was a tradition that God would send His Messiah to put all things right.
Nowhere in St. Peter's thoughts did a betrayal and killing enter in.
When he protests to Our Lord, St. Peter was looking for the deliverance of Judah from Rome, an immediate concern, one that was at the top of the minds of every victim of Roman oppression in that part of the world. After all, didn't this qualify as a crisis befitting a Messiah?
Jesus' rebuke rocked St. Peter back on his heels.
Our Lord very clearly told St. Peter that the Romans were not the big problem, that the issue they posed was not a Divine issue but a Human one. That is not to say it wasn't an issue, but that was not why Jesus was there. St. Peter was focused on the immediate need, the human priority, the one affecting the physical here and now, and in his protest he was trying to divert Jesus to the here and now. Jesus turned to Peter and told him in no uncertain terms that he was playing into Satan's hands, acting on Satan's will, that in this moment that he was Satan, the adversary of God. Jesus said that a Messiah focused on the Roman issue was a human concern, a short-sighted one, one that ultimately did nothing in the long run.
This meant the betrayal, suffering, and death, (and resurrection...in their distress I believe the disciples just didn't hear that part) of Our Lord was part of the Divine plan, the Divine concern, the things of God, as it were. Long after the fact, while trying to drum some sense into the Corinthian Church, St. Paul speaks of the wisdom of God and how it really isn't that intuitive to people. He wrote, "But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." (1 Cor. 2.7-8) The rulers of this age did not mean the Emperor and his cronies, the bullies and the warlords. No, St. Paul is always clear that when he talks of the rulers or principalities or powers of the current age he is referring to those celestial intelligences at odds with God and dedicated to the ruin of God's creation. God's plan to undo that involved tying together Divine and Human Nature in one Person and redeeming it by its suffering, destruction, and reconstitution in Jesus' betrayal, death, and resurrection. Apparently, not only did St. Peter not get this, but neither did Satan and the hordes of Hell. They had no clue that railroading Jesus to his demise would in the end be their demise, that in ignoring the obvious issue at hand, God addressed the underlying root cause. Everyone was blind to the major shift in reality that was about to happen.
Here in Lent as we prepare for our annual commemoration of those fateful days in Jerusalem, we need to take these things to heart, that the things of God are not exactly what we imagine them to be, that we cannot so lose ourselves in the current problems of the day that we forget there is a larger world out there, and that the Enemy had already tried his worst...and failed. Therein lies our hope, not in a smackdown of those who deliberately ignore God, but that God has addressed the final problem by reversing our final descent into nothingness. Without that, resistance of evil is ultimately pointless, but with that hope none of our efforts are in vain. Let us remember that as we deny ourselves and take up our own crosses to follow Him.
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