What do we say ourselves?

Today also Jesus addresses to us Christians the same question he made to his disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” He does not ask us only so that we may make up our mind about his mysterious identity, but also so that we may examine our relationship with him. What reply can we give from the perspective of our Christian communities?

Do we know Jesus better each time, or have we enclosed him in our boring old molds as usual? Are our communities alive, interested in putting Jesus at the center of our lives and activities, or do we live stuck in routine and mediocrity?

Do we love Jesus passionately or has he become for us a worn-out figure that we keep invoking, while indifference and forgetfulness continue to grow in our hearts? Who among those who approach our communities can feel his energy and attractiveness?

Do we feel we are his disciples, men and women? Are we learning to live in today’s society in accordance with his life-style, or do we let ourselves be carried away by every demand that is appealing to our interests? Is it just the same to us to live in any manner, or have we turned our communities into a school where to learn how to live like Jesus?

Are we learning to look at life as Jesus looked at it? From our communities, do we look with compassion and responsibility on the needy and the excluded, or do we shut ourselves up in our celebrations, without concern for the suffering of the most helpless and forgotten that are always dearest to Jesus?

Do we follow Jesus, partnering with him in the Father’s humanizing project, or do we go on thinking that what is most important in Christianity is to worry exclusively about our salvation? Are we convinced that the way to follow Jesus is to live everyday making life more human and more blissful for everyone?

Do we live the Christian Sunday celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, or do we organize our week-end devoid of all Christian meaning? Have we learned how to find Jesus in the silence of our hearts, or do we feel that our faith continues to be extinguished, suffocated by the noise and emptiness inside us?

Do we believe in the risen Jesus who walks with us full of life? Do we live welcoming into our communities the light that he has left behind as a legacy to his followers? Do we believe that Jesus loves us with a love that will never end? Do we believe in his power that renews? Do we know how to bear witness to the mystery of hope that we carry inside us?

José Antonio Pagola

August 24, 2014
21 Ordinary Time (A)
Matthew 16, 13-20