(Twenty-fourth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was
given on September 16, 2018 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr.
Raymond Suriani. Read Isaiah 50: 5-9; Psalm
116: 1-9; James 2: 14-18; Mark 8: 27-35.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Twenty-fourth Sunday 2018]
The rock group, the Byrds, recorded a song many years ago
entitled “Turn, Turn, Turn”. Some of you
may remember it. By the way, if you do
remember it, that means you’re really old—like me (because it was released way back
in 1965)! It went to #1 on the Billboard
chart that year—which was somewhat of a surprise, given the fact that the song
is based on a passage from the Bible: Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8. The passage reads as follows:
There is an appointed time for everything,
and a time for every affair under the heavens.A time to give birth, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to tear down, and a time to build.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them;
a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away.
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
a time to be silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love, and a time to hate;
a time of war, and a time of peace.
Now I wanted to use the Byrds’ musical rendition of that
passage to begin my homily today, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it because the line from
Ecclesiastes 3 that I wanted to focus on in my homily was left out of the
song. The song begins (don’t worry I
won’t sing it; I’ll spare you the penance and just read the words!):
To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn), and a time for every purpose under heaven:A time to be born, a time to die; A time to plant, a time to reap; A time to kill, a time to heal; A time to laugh, a time to weep …
And on and on it goes through all the different “times”
Ecclesiastes mentions in the Bible passage, except
these two: “A time to be silent, and a time to speak.” That line was left out of the song’s lyrics.
Why? I don’t
know. I wish I could tell you. Maybe it was left out for the very practical
reason that it would have disrupted the rhythm of the song. One line had to be left out for the song to
flow properly, and perhaps they chose that one at random. But regardless of what the reason was, I find
meaning in the fact that it was eliminated.
To me it’s a sign of a big spiritual problem we have in our modern world
(a problem that we’ve had at least since 1965 when this song came out):
We’ve
forgotten the value, and the importance, and the necessity—of silence!
(I think that’s one of the reasons why Eucharistic
adoration has become so popular. People
find refuge there from the insanity of their daily lives.)
Let’s face it, we live in a world of constant noise and
almost endless chatter. For many people,
the time to talk is “almost all the time”—which leaves very little left for
silence. And social media has only
aggravated the problem. If certain
people are not texting, or emailing, or tweeting, or talking on the phone, or surfing
the internet, or listening to their radio or iPod, or watching TV or a
movie—then they’re probably sleeping!
Perhaps the best modern examples of how little we value silence today
are the 24-hour cable news channels. All
talk; all the time—and usually very loud!
Consequently very little dialogue and listening actually takes place on
these networks, because the hosts and guests are usually too busy screaming at
each other—and saying things that they will later regret (or at least should regret!).
Talk is sometimes necessary, of course—but at other times silence is just as necessary. One person who learned this
lesson—unfortunately in a very painful way—was Simon Peter. And we see evidence of that in today’s gospel
story from Mark 8. As we heard a few
moments ago, as Jesus and his apostles
were travelling one day to the city of Caesarea Philippi in northern Israel,
our Lord decided to ask his 12 close friends what you might call the “bottom line
question”—the question from Jesus that every human person eventually must answer: “Who do you say that I
am?”—“You’ve just told me who everybody else says that I am; you’ve just told
me what the current ‘polling data’ is concerning me and my identity. But what about you? Where do you
gentlemen stand on the issue? If someone
said to you, ‘Who is Jesus of Nazareth?’ how would you respond?”
Peter immediately gives the answer that every Christian
echoes in his or her heart: “You are the Christ.” In other words, “You are the Messiah—the
Anointed one of God—the one our people have been awaiting for centuries!”
There is a time to
speak Ecclesiastes 3 tells us, and for Peter this was one of those times.
He couldn’t have done it any better; he couldn’t have
stated it any more clearly than he did.
If only he had left it there.
Jesus then begins to tell Peter and the other apostles what
kind of Messiah he will be—which was definitely NOT the kind of Messiah they
were expecting! The Jews thought that
their Messiah would be a great earthly king like King David, who would bring
back the glory days of Israel by restoring the nation to its former greatness.
They thought the Messiah was coming to establish an earthly
kingdom for one small country.
But Jesus indicates to them that he’s come not just to save
Israel; he’s come to save the whole world, by offering his life as a sacrifice
for sin—all sin.
Peter didn’t understand that—which is completely
understandable, given the common Jewish expectation of the time. But instead of remaining silent and
reflecting on it for a while, or taking Jesus aside and saying to him, “Lord, I
don’t understand. Please help me.”,
Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him: “No way, Jesus, this can’t happen to
you! You’re the Messiah; you’re the Son
of David who’s going to rise to power, and assume your throne, and get rid of
the Romans, and make us the number one nation in the world again!”
Jesus then turns on Peter—the man he would soon make the
leader of his Church—and says to him, “Get behind me, Satan!”
Why Satan?
Because at that moment, without realizing it, Peter was
saying to Jesus exactly what Satan would have wanted him to say!
Satan knew that without the cross there would be no
resurrection—and consequently no
salvation for the human race!
He knew that without the death of Jesus we could not be
forgiven for our sins; he knew that without the death of Jesus we could not be
reconciled to God the Father. So he used the words of Peter at Caesarea
Philippi to try to tempt Jesus to give up his mission of dying on the cross to
save the world—which, by the way, is also what he had tried to do at the very
beginning of our Lord’s ministry, with the 3 temptations he threw at Jesus in
the desert. Those 3 temptations were all
attempts to get Jesus to avoid the cross.
Ecclesiastes 3 tells us there is a time to be silent—and
for Peter this was definitely one of those times. But he wasn’t silent. I can imagine Peter walking away from Jesus
that day and saying to himself, “Peter, why oh why didn’t you keep your mouth
shut? Why did you feel like you had to
say that stuff to Jesus?”
Well the good news is that by the time the Gospel of Mark
was written, Peter had learned the lesson about the importance of silence—and
he was putting that lesson into practice.
This is something we also see in this story.
Did you notice that something was missing from Mark’s
account? In Mark we have Peter
proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah followed immediately by our Lord’s
prediction of his passion. In Matthew’s version
of this same story, after Peter proclaims Jesus to be the Messiah, our Lord
says to him, “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 to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever
you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.”
It’s very
interesting—the part of the story in which Peter is extolled for his
God-inspired insight; and given universal authority in the Church; and made, in
effect, the very first pope—that section of the story which makes Peter look
really good—is completely eliminated from Mark’s account!
Mark is totally silent about it, which probably means
that Peter himself was silent about
it. As those of you who took our Bible study class last year will remember, many Scripture
scholars are convinced that St. Mark was actually St. Peter’s scribe—which
means that the Gospel that bears Mark’s name is actually the Gospel that St.
Peter preached in Rome. He either
dictated it directly to Mark, or he had Mark follow him around and take notes
while he preached.
So apparently this is the way Peter told the story—or at
least it’s the way he wanted the story to be told.
Now you might say, “But, Fr. Ray, that makes no sense. Why would St. Peter be silent about that part—the part of the story that
makes him look really, really good?”
To which I would respond, “That’s precisely the reason he
left it out!” At that later point in his
life, Peter was a man of deep and profound humility,
who wanted the focus to be always
on Jesus Christ and his saving work, and not on himself. So, in all likelihood, he either didn’t
mention that part of the story when he preached about the event—consequently
Mark never wrote it down in the first place; or Mark did write it down
initially when he took notes, but Peter had him remove it from the final
version of the text. It was an event
that God wanted Peter to be silent
about—and he knew it. No tweets; no
emails; no Facebook posts! It was
Matthew’s call to share that other part of the story with the rest of the world.
And he did.
Today we pray to be like Peter in his later years: the
Peter who had learned (sometimes painfully) the lesson of Ecclesiastes 3 about
speaking at the right time and being silent at the right time. In fact, I’ll give you a short prayer that
you can say every day for that intention—and I’ll end my homily with this
prayer:
“Lord, give me the grace to speak when you want me to
speak, and the grace to be silent when you want me to be silent. And give me the wisdom to know the
difference.”
