Confession of Peter (Sunday Gospel’s Commentary)

August 24, 2014August 6, 2015 FOS

The liturgy of this 21st Sunday proposes to us the gospel of the confession of Peter at Caesarea of Philippi.

Many see in the background of the text the Jewish feast of Kippur. Why? First of all in ch 17 which follows the event of Caesarea, Matthew introduces the scene of the Transfiguration of Jesus with those words: Six days after….After what? Now behind the Transfiguration is the Festival of the booths, the Jewish Feast of Sukkot. We have the three “skene” which is Greek can mean tent, tabernacle but also booth; we have the cloud that the Jewish tradition relates to the booths and the experience of the wilderness, and if the Transfiguration of Jesus is an anticipation of his glory, the feast of Sukkot gives a foretaste of the eschatology.

So 6 days before, if we include the first of those six days is Kippur ( cf Lev 23, 27-34)

Several elements allow to see behind the confession of Peter at Caesarea the feast of Kippur, I will just comment the declaration of Peter: you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

At Kippur, the High Priest entered for the only time in the year in the Holy of Holy and pronounced the Name of God, which means revealing his being, his identity.

Now Jesus calls Peter :Simon son of Jonah. We can see behind the high priest quoted in Ecclesiasticus ch 50 whose description reminds the magnificent celebration of Kippur in the Temple.

Simon-Peter reveals the identity of Jesus. And as a consequence, Jesus tells him “ you are Peter (petros ) and on this rock (petra which renders the arameic kefa cf John 1,42 ) …….Now the High priest in the time of Jesus was named Caiphas(kaiafa), which could be a variation of the same name. And he provokes Jesus telling him: I put you under oath before the living God, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God, which echoes the profession of Peter.

There are other allusions to kippur, among them the power of binding and loosing, allusion to the forgiveness of the sins at Kippur.But the most important is what Peter declares on Jesus.

Each one of us can hear Jesus asking “Who do you say that I am?”. And each one will give his or her personal answer But we cannot escape the fundamental answer of Peter which qualifies our Christian identity. There can be many messiahs, but this one is the Son of the living God. And only the Father can reveal this to us. It is why Jesus says to Peter Happy are you…it is not a simple and banal felicitation but a “beatitude”.

Let us ask the Father to reveal to us always deeper who is really Jesus and with Paul to the Romans say: O the depth of the riches and knowledge of God!

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