Home Community Sunday Gospel Thoughts September 12, 2021, 24th Ordinary Sunday Reply To: September 12, 2021, 24th Ordinary Sunday

#1851
Phrogge
Keymaster

It is worthwhile to ask ourselves what/who Jesus is for us in our everyday life.

When Jesus asks who people say that he is, he gets the standard common responses of doctrines. When he asks Peter “who do you say that I am”, Peter answers from his own experience. There is the difference between what we know from others, and what we know from our own experience, the difference between knowing about Jesus, and knowing Jesus.

What we know from others has Jesus tied up in a series of questions and answers, nicely and specifically worded dogmas, and approved titles and names. What we know from our own experience often is tentative, hesitant, doubting, questioning, wondering, but very real nonetheless. Often the best we way can talk about what we know from experience is to use the wording of the dogmas, but also adding “yes, but”, there is more that can’t be put into words.

We can’t come to know Jesus by thinking or logic, because Jesus is not a concept or idea, but a real experience, something like when his followers encountered him after the Resurrection. Many folks don’t get beyond Jesus as a concept or idea.

As we come to know Jesus more and more personally in our experience, perhaps the simplest and truest response is awe.