Who Do You Say That He Is?

June 29, 2025 |by N W | 0 Comments | Commitment, Guest Celebrants, Perseverance, Saints, St. Paul, Vocations

Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
June 29, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 12:1-11 / Ps 34 / 2 Tm 4:6-8, 17-18 / Mt 16:13-19
by Rev. Sam Hill, Guest Celebrant

I am so thankful to be here again to celebrate Mass with you all.  A couple of Wednesdays ago, on the 18th, I said that Holy Name of Mary embraced me and that I was kind of surprised when I decided to go to seminary and discovered that all these people really cared about the priesthood.  You made me feel humble and I have so much gratitude to you all, especially as you took me in as a new convert and then as a man going off to the seminary.

What I was thinking about in reading this gospel today is that seminary is a time of deep interior conversion, or at least it should be.  It’s a place where we find that we encounter the Lord day after day.  We have Mass every day.  We have confession available every day of the week if you need it, and we are encouraged to go at least once a week, as seminarians preparing to be priests.

In a way, Peter and Paul, I think, had a seminarian experience.  They were with the Lord day after day, experiencing Him face to face, hearing His words, learning from Him, learning who they were themselves, and learning who Jesus was.  Therefore, at the core of this process of conversion, which we are all called to as Christians, is that question that we hear today: “Who do you say that I am?”  After encountering Jesus day after day, we find that we know him better and better, and we’re able to answer that question.

Who do you say that He is?  Who is He to you?  As we continue to grow in our Christian faith, Jesus never stops asking this question of us.   That’s important because this question is a marker that tells us if we have grown.  Have we grown closer to Jesus?  Somebody asked if it is even possible to know God, though.  Is it possible to know who Jesus is?  In fact, Saint Augustine would say that the person who says that he understands God reveals to everyone else that he understands nothing.  He doesn’t understand God at all.

Does this mean that we can’t know God?  No, we can.  We can know who God is, but our knowledge is maybe different than what we expect.  Our knowledge of God is our relationship; it’s something that’s ongoing and dynamic.  It’s continual and it continues to grow over time.

So, the answer to that question, “Who do you say that I am?” is not just one fixed thing.  You can’t just say, “This is who Jesus is,” and that’s it and that’s that.  But this question, this relationship, is dynamic; it grows.  And it’s dynamic, not in the sense that it completely changes.  Jesus is not changing it every day.  God is the same from all time.  But it changes in the sense that it’s always getting deeper.  You’re always able to grow more deeply and more profoundly in your faith.

There’s no end to the knowledge of God, but the relationship can grow stale.  In fact, it can lose life.  We lose interest in Him when we stop seeking to know Him.  The psalms describe Jesus as the fountain of life.  He’s not just a pool of life.  The baptismal font is not just a pool that’s stagnant or stale.  It’s described as gushing water.  We are always being filled continually with Him.  In fact, that’s what heaven will be like.  It won’t be this place where we just know who Jesus is.  It will be where Jesus is revealed in His fullness day after day.  There’s no end to God’s goodness, and heaven is the place where we will be filled day after day, moment after moment, with the fullness of God’s goodness.

A good friendship is one where you never stop learning more about the other person.  I challenge each of you, and this is a difficult thing, to ask your friend if you think about it, “Who do you say that I am?” Have you ever been asked that by someone else?  Who am I to you?  How do you see me?  How has your perspective changed about me over time?

I think it’s a very difficult question.  A lot of our friendships can feel stale at some point.  You have grown accustomed to each other, and you do the same things that you always do, but a true friendship is one that is always growing, always getting deeper, always getting closer.  This could be a really cool way to take stock of a relationship that has grown stale in your lives.

“Who do you say I am?”  This is a question that Jesus is asking us about Himself.  He’s asking, who do you see Me as?  This is a good Sunday for us to evaluate that question. Am I growing in love with God?  Or have I let that relationship grow stale?  Has that relationship grown flat?

Both Peter and Paul have great stories of growing in friendship with Jesus.  Their stories are great, not because they are just great apostles.  (We call them the princes of the apostles; they’re in the Collect prayer we heard this morning.)  They’re the ones that founded the Church.  Paul went out and preached to the Gentiles, and Peter became this solid figure who died in Rome.  Their stories are great, not because of how they ended, but because of what happened in the meantime.  They’re great because of the imperfections that they eventually overcame with Jesus’ help.

Peter was first a fisherman whom Jesus called and who came to know Jesus, but even in him we see this growth over time.  He knows Jesus as this man who has called him to be His follower at first, and then in the gospel today, we hear that Peter makes this profound profession of Jesus, “You are the Lord.”

After this passage we will encounter a Peter who denies Jesus, a Peter who abandons Jesus on the cross.  The fact that Peter is one of the apostles, allowed this story to be in the gospel.  God allowed this story to be shared.  He knows this story is for His glory and for our good.  This story lets us know that even though we have come to know Jesus, we don’t have to be perfect.  We can always grow more and more.  Jesus allows that too.  He knows that we’re imperfect, so despite that initial imperfection of Peter, despite his denial, despite his doubt, we come to the end of his life where he’s able to not turn away from his cross, but actually embrace it.

Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome has become a place of pilgrimage, even from the time that he died.  There’s a story about how, when Christianity became legal in Rome, the emperor Constantine built this beautiful church called St John Lateran, and that was going to be the heart of the church in Rome.  In fact, it’s still the cathedral of Rome.  It’s the place where the Pope presides.

However, Constantine noticed, and was disappointed, that many Christians would not go to that beautiful church.  They kept going out of the city walls across the Tiber River to a grand mausoleum called Vatican on the Vatican Hill.  He said, “Why are they going there?”  It was because they had a devotion to Peter even in the early days.  They had a devotion that carries on in the tradition even today.  That place where Peter died, where he made that testament, where his denial became his acceptance, where his denial became his great act of love and sacrifice.  It’s an important place for us as Christians and Catholics.

Paul similarly had a great conversion, because he was a Pharisee and he was persecuting the Christians.  Today, if there were somebody who was murdering Christians and all of a sudden he said, “I want to become an apostle,” would we even allow that?  Would we let that happen?  It’s kind of crazy to think that the very man who was killing many, many Christians became the one to evangelize the entire world, and became a testament to the Gentiles.  One of my favorite verses in the gospels says, “There is no greater love than this—to lay down one’s life for a friend.”  That’s what the Christian life is about.

Who do we say Jesus is?  He’s a friend, and that means that we grow in a relationship with Him day after day, that we grow deeper and deeper in love with Him each day.  So where will this friendship with Jesus take us?  I think we don’t really know.  Peter was a fisherman.  Paul was a Pharisee.  Paul was killing Christians, yet these two men became great apostles.  Each was unique, each was an individual in his mission, but they show us that friendship with Jesus is worth living for and worth dying for.

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Nunc Coepi: Now I Begin!

April 6, 2025 |by N W | 0 Comments | Deacon Mark, Forgiveness, Lent, Mercy, Obedience, Perseverance, Self-Reflection, Sin

Fifth Sunday of Lent
April 6, 2025 — Year C
by Rev. Mr. Mark De La Hunt, Permanent Deacon
Readings:  Is 43:16-21 / Ps 126 / Phil 3:8-14 / John 8:1-11

Today we begin the 5th week of Lent and next week is Holy Week.  It kicks off with Palm Sunday and Lent officially ends when Holy Thursday begins the Holy Triduum. 

I strongly encourage you to make a Lenten resolution, and whatever sacrifice you need to make, to attend Holy Thursday Mass, Good Friday Liturgy, and Easter Vigil Mass Saturday night.  I attended my first Triduum at the age of 25 and it was a conversion moment.  It opened my mind and heart to more fully grasp Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection.  The Triduum helped me make sense of the transition from the austerity of Lent to the joy of Easter.

If you recall, the week before Lent began, I preached on Jesus’ invitation to become more like Him.  I suggested doing this through practicing the Virtues and living the Beatitudes with the help of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, which perfect and complete our virtue and make us more docile before God’s will.  If you accepted that spiritual challenge or something equally daunting, you likely failed one or more times in the past four weeks.

If you have failed or simply need to dig deeper, I encourage you with the motto of Venerable Bruno Lanteri who founded the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, “Nunc Coepi,”  Latin for “Now I begin.”  It’s a Catholic way of saying, “Never give up.  Never surrender to failure or mediocrity in the spiritual life!”  (Venerable is a title for one of “heroic virtue,” under consideration for sainthood.)

We have, if I did my Catholic Lenten math correctly, nine days of Lent left to strive with grace to become more like Jesus.  Think of those nine days as a living Lenten novena.  Today’s gospel gives us hope to try.  Jesus told the woman who committed adultery, “I do not condemn you. Go and do not sin any more.” (Jn 8: 11)  Nunc Coepi.  

Jesus saw something in that woman that was worth saving.  Jesus is like Michelangelo, the great Italian sculptor, who once said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”  Jesus saw a mini-Christ in the woman who committed the sin of adultery.  He sees a mini-Christ in you and me and is chiseling and carving us to free us to be holy enough to one day enter God’s presence in heaven. 

Here is a personal story where Jesus revealed this spiritual reality to me.  I began my Lent focused on practicing the Virtues and the Beatitudes with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Ten days in, speaking with Jesus during prayer using Ignatian meditation, He revealed to me a weakness that He hit with His chisel the day before.

The day He spoke of was when I was driving to a doctor’s appointment in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  (You may have driven this trip before.  You get off 29 south in Danville and turn left onto highway 86 to Yanceyville, a long rural two-lane road.)  For the first time in making that trip, I ended up behind a slow 18-wheeler.  I kept looking for opportunities to pass it, with no luck.  Anxiety was gnawing at me, as these appointments take months to get.  I kept praying, “Jesus I trust in you.”  It was Lent and I was on my game! 

The truck eventually turned off that road and I was able to speed up and get back on schedule.  I thanked Jesus for His grace in staying calm.  I made my final turn off the interstate, a turn I have made several times the past four years.  But for whatever reason, it did not look right, and I ignored my GPS, looking for a familiar place to turn.  I was falling behind schedule.  I became very agitated, not only about being late, but also because of this unsettling sense of losing my memory with age. Panic set in. 

Praying to St. Joseph for help, I found the medical center.  I walked hurriedly through the parking garage, still feeling agitated.  An older woman up ahead lost her balance a little and a woman closer to her, offered to help her.  The woman who stumbled said she was fine.  The helpful woman and I continued on our way, but the helpful woman stopped again, turned around and asked the other lady if she was sure she did not want some help.  The lady said she was sure, and we proceeded to the medical center.  Wrapped up in my anxiousness to get to my appointment, I never said a word.  I did not affirm the helpful lady, nor encourage the one who stumbled.

Now, back to my Ignatian meditation the following day:  Jesus asked if the woman in the garage that I failed to help was on my mind?  I said, “Yes.”  Then I asked somewhat cheekily, “Did you place that slow 18-wheeler in front of me and cause me to lose my sense of direction on the way to my doctor’s appointment?”  He said, “Yes.”  I felt His divine chisel hit.  I was so disappointed in myself, for failing His test, especially because a couple of months earlier, I had preached on saints always being available to help.  And even more so, because I was wearing my Roman collar in case someone wanted prayer in the waiting room.  I felt the chisel strike again, and cringed thinking what that helpful woman must have thought about Catholic clergy after seeing my indifference to someone in need. 

Jesus told me that the helpful woman’s two attempts to lend aid were grace he sent me to try and awaken me.  Another strike of His chisel.  He said that I tend to focus so much on schedules and tasks that I miss opportunities to love.  The divine chisel hurts.  But then he encouraged me to begin again.  Nunc Coepi.  He told me that my focus for Lent was to be always ready to help, even when I am in a rush.  He then told me He took care of the lady in need and that He loved me.  It was as if He said, “Mark, I do not condemn you.  Go and do not sin any more.  Be ready to help another even when feeling rushed.” 

What is really cool is that a week before my trip, God’s grace began preparing my heart for His divine chisel.  Just three days into Lent, due to a history of failure in other areas of my life, I wondered if I was progressing at all in becoming more like Jesus.  I told my spiritual director, Fr. Joe, about my failures and asked him if I was progressing. He shared that Michelangelo quote about freeing the angel in the marble and spoke of Jesus using a chisel to sculpt us.  Two days later in Confession, the priest mentioned the chisel metaphor.  And then on Hallow I heard a St. Maximilian Kolbe quote on Jesus’ chisel.  Before this time, I had not heard that metaphor before.  (Pay attention when God repeats Himself three times!)  Fr. Joe then prayed these words from the French priest and scientist, Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: 

“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you [chiseling],
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.”

Fr. Joe then encouraged me with the reminder that the sculpting Jesus begins in this life is often not finished until after death, in purgatory.  There He chisels whatever else we need to be freed from, to be that person we have so long desired to be, that angel in the marble that our Lord has seen from the moment of our conception, that real me and real you that He refuses to condemn IF we seek His forgiveness AND surrender to his divine chisel. 

With all of that in mind, listen again to God speaking to us from today’s readings where He invites us to pray with Fr. Bruno Lanteri, “Nunc Coepi.  Now I begin.”

From Isaiah on Nunc Coepi:  “Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!…the people whom I formed for myself.”  (Is 18-19;21) (The chiseling began when He made us a new creation in Baptism.)

From the Psalmist on Nunc Coepi:  “Those who sow in tears shall reap rejoicing.” (Ps 12: 5)  (Chiseling hurts and may even bring tears, but surrendering to it brings about amazingly wonderful transformation.) 

From Philippians:  St. Paul writes on Jesus not being done chiseling him, “I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession [of being a mini-Christ]. Just one thing:  forgetting what lies behind [our failures] but straining forward to what lies ahead [Nunc Coepi], I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3: 13-14)

As for the gospel, Jesus speaks words that transform the hearts of His enemies from accusation to compassion, from trying to punish to letting go and letting God.  Listen to Jesus, this time imagining Him looking directly at you with a stone in your hand.  “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.” (Jn 8:7)  Then see His look of love for the person you want to stone and hear Him say, “Has no one condemned you?…Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” (Jn 8:11)  [Now that person can say Nunc Coepi, Now I begin.]

Never forget this truth: Jesus is God and His words have power to make all things new! (Rev 21:5)  He said, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone,” and the angry mob became a compassionate community.  He said, “Lazarus come out,” and the dead man came out. “This is my body,” and the bread became His flesh.  Just as His words still change the bread into His flesh today, so too did His words do something new in those listening back then and continue to bring about something new in us listening right now.  Not only can we see where WE need chiseling, but through His grace, we also can now see the angel in others striving to be freed.  With your newly chiseled eyes and heart, be patient and compassionate with one another. And for others and yourself, “Trust in the slow work of God.”  

Now, let’s seek the intercession of a saint who was an expert with a chisel and who taught Jesus how to use one too: 

St. Joseph, you chiseled wood to make it beautiful and to make it strong enough to withstand the storms and abuse of life.  Pray for us that we forget what lies behind and surrender to your carpenter son’s chisel, trusting He will make us new, freed to be like Him.  Amen. 

Nunc Coepi, my friends. Now we begin!

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