The Gospel for The memorial of St. Dominic Priest is taken from Matthew 16:23. Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi. And he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of Man is? They replied, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am?
Simon? Peter said in reply, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus said to him in reply, blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him. God forbid, Lord, no such thing shall ever happen to you.
He turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do. When Jesus describes who he is to his disciples, when he tells Peter that he’s going to have a role that is amazingly important and filled with wisdom that he will not have until it is given to him by the Father. So we see in this story is that the responsibility that these men were undertaking was over their head. The they couldn’t possibly do this unless something happened to them.
And what happened to them was that they also, along with Jesus, went through a transformation of dying to their own selfishness and rising to a new birth, a new life, a new wisdom. Please take a few moments to reflect upon the thoughts that I’ve offered in these reflections. And then I will offer a closing prayer. Foreign the closing prayer. The transformation the disciples went through is the transformation that you and I also go through. We learn about God slowly.
We begin to feel his strength and getting stronger within us. Bless us with a readiness to respond to these insights so that we can continue the journey of becoming the Church you’ve called us to be. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.