Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah.” In these three answers, we hear both the hopes and the fears of the Jewish people.

Elijah was the great prophet taken up into heaven, and many traditions arose about his return one day to prepare the way for the Messiah. To identify Jesus with Elijah, then, was an expression of hope. People could see in Jesus the dawn of the Messianic Age—though perhaps not yet its full realization.

Those who see in Jesus John the Baptist redivivus—John the Baptist returned to life—also feel hope, but from a different perspective. John had been executed by a corrupt king who illegitimately claimed the throne of David. In seeing John the Baptist returned, they hope for revolution. They hope for one who will cast off these pretenders, free the Jewish people from their oppressors and ultimately from the Roman Empire itself, restore Israel to true freedom, and bring about the Messianic peace for which they longed.

The third possibility, Jeremiah, is not an image of hope. It is an image of fear. Jeremiah was not listened to in his own time. The people disliked his message, refused to heed his word, and rejected him. As a consequence, they returned to Egypt, the place of slavery. Even after experiencing that return and all its symbolic implications, they still would not listen to him. According to an ancient tradition, Jeremiah was eventually stoned to death by his own people in order to silence his accusations and his call to repentance. Lives of the Prophets 2.1; Tertullian, Scorpiace 8.

The belief that Jeremiah had returned would therefore have filled the people with fear. If Jeremiah were walking among them again, it would not be to overthrow the Roman Empire or cast off corrupt Jewish leaders. It would not simply be to inaugurate the Messianic Age. It would be to continue his original ministry: to call the people back to repentance; to tell them that the fundamental problem was not the world but the believers; to tell them that they were displeasing God and that they were the ones who needed to change. That was not what they wanted to hear.

To a greater or lesser degree, all three of the people’s guesses are correct. In St. Peter’s authentic confession of faith, we hear and see them all brought to their true fulfillment: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus is the true and authentic Messiah, the one who fulfills every Messianic image and prophecy, the reality toward which all those earlier shadows pointed.

Like Elijah, he comes down from heaven. He inaugurates the Messianic Age because he is the Messiah. As the people hoped a returned John the Baptist would do, he will indeed overthrow the powers of this world; the mighty will be cast down. Yet, like John the Baptist, he will also suffer. He will be crucified and killed by the powers of this world. But he is also Jeremiah.

The Lord does not center his ministry on criticizing the powers of this world, whether religious or secular. His criticism is aimed at those who hear him, those who are listening to him. It is aimed at our minds and hearts. His principal message is not that our enemy is outside us, but that our enemy is within our own hearts.

We want the enemy to be external because that is so much easier. It is easy to say, “Look at that awful person. Look at that awful institution. Let us fight them. Let us destroy them.” But no matter how many people we tear down, and no matter how many institutions we destroy and replace, it will never be enough. The fundamental problem is not in them. It is within our own hearts.

That is what our Messiah reveals to us. Truly bringing about the kingdom of God—the reign of God in this world—requires greater fidelity on our own part. Our enemy is not outside. It is not the world. It is here. The enemy is sitting next to us right now. The enemy, in fact, is us.

We are unfaithful to the new covenant given to us in Christ’s blood. We are unfaithful to his words and his teachings. Through our sins, we continually reject Christ and weaken his witness in the world. To bring about the world’s conversion, to bring about the reign of God, we must become faithful. We must change our lives and truly imitate our Lord.

St. Peter gives us the authentic confession of faith, but it is not enough merely to repeat his words. We must allow those words to change our lives. We must truly make Christ our Lord and our King, the one whom we follow without reservation and without hesitation. We must remove every barrier that prevents us from imitating him, so that we may be conformed to him and become like him.

That is the only way to an authentic and lasting peace. That is the only way to paradise.