Last Sunday at Mass we heard Our Lord bless St. Peter and give him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
This week Jesus just called him Satan.
Wait, what?
Humans are funny creatures, full of compromises, contradictions, aggravations, cognitive dissonances, and in some cases even among the most intelligent outright idiocy. I heard once from a monk in a community say that anyone who doubts the total depravity of humankind should drive once in a major city's rush-hour traffic. We hear teaching that we are created good, that at the core we are good, but that's only part of the story. Some of us have heard we are all born sinners, condemned from the get go. In reality, it is both. Our creation, our existence, is good, but it has been corrupted long ago and we bear this terminal morbidity, each and every one of us.
So we turn to St. Peter. Last week, he recognizes in Jesus His divine status, His identity as the Messiah, the Holy One of Israel. That was the good in St. Peter recognizing the truth surrounding Our Lord. This week, however, when Jesus lets His disciples in on the end-game of His time in Israel, St. Peter's goodness takes a back seat to the corruption suffusing Simon Bar Jonah. St. Peter lost sight of the Divine Plan and let national politics take over. And Jesus reminded St. Peter pointedly just who was behind human politics.
So it is with us. Too often we take pleasure in the things of God, we live for the beauty in worship, but when it comes to the dirty and difficult work of the Kingdom of God we say, "Uh, no, that's not the way it's supposed to be!" We try to overlay God's will with ours or even try to pretend our will is God's. That is what Jesus calls out here. Not St. Peter becoming the Devil, but letting the corruption suffusing us all to blind him to what he had already seen. May we all take this to heart.