24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
Jesus asked His disciples on their way to Caesarea Philippi, "Who do people say that I am?" in today’s gospel reading from the gospel of Saint Mark 8:27-35. This question of Jesus many years ago still seems very relevant to us today. Jesus’s question to his disciples is a question for us too. Jesus really wanted to find out the perception of the world about Him and if His disciples really knew who He was. I doubt our answer to Jesus if He asks us this question will be better than that of His disciples. The disciples’ answer to Jesus was based on the fact that they were with the people, preaching to them about God’s kingdom, sharing the gospel, communicating, interacting, ministering and living out the gospel among them. But today in our world, we are not preaching or proclaiming the gospel of Christ, sharing the gospel of Christ with the world, reaching out to them, communicating to them, interacting with them about the gospel, ministering to them with the gospel and living out the gospel among them. So if we don’t do these things, then how will the world know who Christ is? Who then will the world say Jesus is?From this perspective, we can infer that we don’t know who Jesus is to us since we haven’t proclaimed Him to the world as we should, hence, we have indeed forgotten who Jesus is to us and how important He is in our lives? This also means we have forgotten our Catholic teachings, doctrines and tradition! We have forgotten our duty to go out into the whole world and proclaim the good news as Jesus commanded us to.
So why is it important for the disciples and us to know who Jesus is? It is important to know who Jesus is because of all He has done and continues to do for us and because He is our Savior and Redeemer without whom we can do nothing, be something or achieve anything. Prophet Isaiah reminds us in our first reading today of what Jesus, the suffering servant went through for our sake (Is 50:5-9a). Our knowledge of God through Jesus is what we are called to proclaim, teach and preach to the world.
