Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk in the shoes of Jesus' disciples, experiencing the shock, disbelief, and confusion they felt when Jesus declared his impending death? Imagine being in the midst of pagan rituals and child sacrifices in the ancient city of Caesarea Philippi, only to hear that your leader, Jesus, must journey to Jerusalem to face his end. This episode gives us a rich, historical immersion where we delve into the disciples' reactions, especially that of Peter's misguided attempt to thwart Jesus' mission. We paint a vivid picture of the city; from its ancient cave believed to be a dwelling place for spirits to the chilling rituals that took place.
Dare to step further into the shoes of the apostles in this episode as we examine their human reality and the rivalry among them, personified in the characters of Peter and Judas. We take a close look at Peter's audacity in declaring Jesus as the Christ and contrast it with Judas' despair symbolized by the crowing rooster. We also analyze the implications of Jesus' prediction concerning his journey to Jerusalem and the conditions it sets for discipleship in our lives today. Expect to be challenged, inspired, and perhaps even unsettled, as we journey through this riveting exploration of faith, humanity and divine purpose.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk in the shoes of Jesus' disciples, experiencing the shock, disbelief, and confusion they felt when Jesus declared his impending death? Imagine being in the midst of pagan rituals and child sacrifices in the ancient city of Caesarea Philippi, only to hear that your leader, Jesus, must journey to Jerusalem to face his end. This episode gives us a rich, historical immersion where we delve into the disciples' reactions, especially that of Peter's misguided attempt to thwart Jesus' mission. We paint a vivid picture of the city; from its ancient cave believed to be a dwelling place for spirits to the chilling rituals that took place.
Dare to step further into the shoes of the apostles in this episode as we examine their human reality and the rivalry among them, personified in the characters of Peter and Judas. We take a close look at Peter's audacity in declaring Jesus as the Christ and contrast it with Judas' despair symbolized by the crowing rooster. We also analyze the implications of Jesus' prediction concerning his journey to Jerusalem and the conditions it sets for discipleship in our lives today. Expect to be challenged, inspired, and perhaps even unsettled, as we journey through this riveting exploration of faith, humanity and divine purpose.
Jordan:
You're listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast. In this podcast, we discuss the acts and miracles that Jesus performed that stunned his disciples. I'm Jordan Waiko, along with Father Andrew Hamilton and Father Christopher Pujol Jordan. What are we talking about today? Today's topic is the prediction of the passion. Now Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and be killed. So what do you think they were thinking? If you were one of Jesus' disciples, what would your reaction have been to this news?
Father Chris:
Oh why. Or to be a little selfish, I think, oh, maybe I shouldn't go along.
Father Andrew:
I'm going to sit this one out.
Father Chris:
Yeah, I'll meet you back in Nazareth. I'll wait, but so where are they?
Father Andrew:
at Jordan, you know.
Jordan:
No, you tell me All right. Why don't you set the stage a little bit?
Father Chris:
That sounds good. Okay, we've been doing that for episodes in a row now. Yeah.
Father Andrew:
Caesarea Philippi. Think of it. Caesar, philip, philip the Tetrarch names it after Caesar, of course, which is the Roman emperor. So it's not a Jewish town. That's important to know. It's a pagan city and so forth, and it's above Nazareth. Now, talking about disciples being stunned or the apostles following Jesus, this was a place that was known as a pagan worship site of the God Pawn, specifically of the of a God, goddess of fertility for the pagans. And so immediately the disciples would have said to themselves why are we going to Caesarea Philippi? So much so that it was common that there was a large underground cave there that they would actually sacrifice to the God Pawn for healthy harvest and other things and fertility and so on. And what they would do is they would actually throw first a goat or a lamb into this large cave and then, depending upon what came out of the cave blood or whatnot they would accept and see that maybe God, the God Pawn, had accepted this sacrifice or rejected it Right.
Father Chris:
And so if it was a?
Father Andrew:
rejection of the sacrifice. The next thing that they turned to not another animal, but a child or a virgin that they would then throw into the cave and sacrifice to the God Pawn. So this was a place that was known to be terrible. Jewish people would not have wanted to go there, so the disciples probably were thinking what in the world?
Father Chris:
are we doing here? Caesarea, philippi, turn around, we shouldn't be passing through. It's like driving through those parts of town. You're like, ooh, maybe I shouldn't be here right now. And that had to be what they were thinking this is not my area. And Jesus is just like trust me, it'll all be okay. But then he begins to explain to them where they're going and why, and that's what makes them all stop in their tracks.
Father Andrew:
And I think, bringing up from a previous episode, what Father Chris had said about Peter right when he goes out onto the water, Peter's always this one that wants to jump ahead of Jesus and he's always kind of putting his foot in his mouth. And so this is another instance where Peter does something really good immediately before this prediction, and then he gets rebuked by Jesus in this passage.
Father Andrew:
So Jesus asks all of the apostles who do? They say that I am? Some say Elijah and prophet, or Moses, and so on. But what does Peter say? You're the Lord, you're the Son of God, you're the living God, right? And so he proclaims him to be the Messiah, the one that will die for their sins. And so Jesus says then to Peter well, he changes his name Simon Peter, just Peter. You are the rock on which the church shall rest. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. So he's told to be good and changes his name. Everything's really grand and so forth. And then Jesus says I'm going to Jerusalem to die.
Father Chris:
And.
Father Andrew:
Peter says God forbid it.
Jordan:
God's saying it. All right, he's an obstacle.
Father Chris:
And everything stops. And that's when Jesus you can almost hear him stop, like that footprint, just stop in the sand, a little bit of dust spins around and he says get behind me, satan, you're an obstacle to me. And Peter had to be shaken in his boots.
Father Andrew:
No, I don't want to undo what Father Christ has said here, but this is the way I'm going to say it was explained to me in Caesarea of Philippi. Normally the guides look up at the big rock, face the cliff. So it makes sense whenever Jesus says you are the rock, because there's a bunch of big rock face there. But that cave that we were talking about earlier would be probably behind Jesus as he's explaining maybe this to Peter in them.
Jordan:
How can Jesus still build his church on Peter when he calls him Satan?
Father Andrew:
Well, he's basically in that moment. The way that Peter is actually acting is a stumbling block to the mission of God, in which that he's acting like how Satan would do. So Satan accuses. And then we have another word in Greek, diabolos, which is we get the word devil from and that means to cast apart, and so, in some sense, what the devil does to us is casts us apart from the mission of God, apart from God, and then he creates a stumbling block between us and salvation.
Father Andrew:
And so what Peter's doing here is trying to keep God back from the redemptive work that he's come to do. So, literally, when he says, get behind me Satan, he's telling him to go to where?
Father Andrew:
To, literally, the gates of the netherworld, to hell, the place where they sacrificed children and annergens and everything to a false God, and there was a belief in the ancient world that kind of spirits would rise up through these caves in the pagan world and then come to dwell on the earth. Did you visit that cave? Yeah, you can look down into it. You can't go the whole way. And there's niches built into the rock cliff that you could see. That was like, at one point, a temple, and then Cesaria Philippi, the town would be up on top of the hill.
Father Chris:
That's where so often in Christian art and in story that we see heaven above, hell below. There's always that space of hell beneath. And this won't be the last time that Peter stumbles and falls and tries to not do the will of God. We'll see Peter deny that our Lord three times. So it's almost the continuous conversion of humanity to get a grasp on what God's doing. And I mean even today, 2000 years later, here we are still talking about it.
Father Andrew:
This is a good point, though, which conversion isn't just like one and done Now you're perfect and you're on exactly the narrow path and you never want to stray from it and all these other things. Conversion has to happen over time, just like habits. If we build a bad habit, it takes a while to get out of it, even if we know that we need to end it, and so we might revert or fall into these things, as we're still trending upwards. So hopefully that's the arc of our salvation, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to have gullies or valleys in that, and you see that in the life of Peter, right. And an important question for us too to ask ourselves who do we think God is? He usually breaks outside of our own barriers that we try to box him in, and that he can work in ways that we don't foresee and work in extraordinary ways. And that's always important for us in our faith is to see that we can't exactly know all of God, right. He's so much, infinitely greater than us. We're looking from inside the box at everything and he's outside of the box and seeing it in its full aspect. And so think about the disciples A lot of the times in ancient Jewish culture, they thought that there was going to be some great religious leader, there would be a military leader even that would come and that would overthrow the Romans who were oppressing them and conquer the world.
Father Andrew:
Right. And Jesus, that's not his mission. He's not here to be a political messiah, but rather the one true messiah who writes humanity with God, not just in this world but into the next. And so that's an important part that here. You see that Peter kind of has this false notion of who Jesus is supposed to be. He's still thinking that he's going to overthrow everything and that he's going to live and reign gloriously on the earth and be robed in purple and have a crown. And then what do we see in his passion? He is robed in purple, but mocked and crowned with thorns.
Jordan:
So we talked a lot about Peter, but how do you think the other disciples were feeling when Jesus referred to Peter as Satan? Maybe like ouch?
Father Andrew:
Maybe didn't say much.
Father Chris:
You can almost hear James and John thinking oh, now's our chance to step forward and take control, because we see where their mother is like. Oh, we want, I want my sons on your right and your left.
Father Andrew:
I think that we have to think that there would have been some rivalry and we get the scriptures from that passage.
Father Andrew:
You're just saying so. Some of them might have thought like hey serves them right. You know, because Peter's always the one that's like kind of set out front, and sometimes we have this in our own life where it's like, okay, I'm just as competent as Peter, why am I not the guy called to be the rock, why am I not the one that Jesus is putting it as the premier or the primacy? And I think in that it would have been a time where they could have taken it as like a I feel bad for Peter and so like we're going to consult him or other apostles might have been like yeah, they've been one of their human reality.
Father Chris:
And plus, I think, too, all of them had to be thinking we can't save ourselves, humanity can't save humanity. And so, as they made their way to Jerusalem, and when they hear this, I'm sure a majority of them thought this is true, it's coming. We've seen the miracles, we've seen the encounters Like he knows what he's talking about.
Father Andrew:
Have you ever maybe been in a class where somebody asks a question and you're like I know the answer, but I don't want to be wrong.
Father Andrew:
That's what I think of all the time immediately before this passage with the prediction, which is like Peter says, like, because he usually just puts his foot in his mouth anyway, so he might as well just throw it out there to see if it's right. You are Christ's, son of the living God and he gets it right. But I think a lot of the other apostles around him are probably like dang.
Jordan:
I knew that, you know I was, I was right, yeah despite so, father, because you have this friend, liz Lev, and in her we did a video with her and she says that you know, we're all like Judas. We are all sinners. We, all you know, do things like Judas, but I don't know. You're talking about Peter and I feel like I'm Peter. I'm always putting my foot in my mouth and well see the difference between Peter and Judas, right?
Father Chris:
Peter recognizes when he makes a mistake and he seeks to write it and he seeks forgiveness. Judas, when he realized what he did, disbared and he is in his pride. He could not ask the Lord to forgive him. But I think Judas and Peter in some sense commit some of the same types of sins not the same sin, but they both betrayed our Lord and they both denied God.
Father Andrew:
I love. There's the image of the rooster.
Jordan:
Yeah.
Father Andrew:
So there's a church in Jerusalem, st Peter, and Gallicantu, st Peter the rooster. But he denies the Lord after hearing the cock crow or the rooster crow three times, likewise on an old Irish penal cross.
Father Andrew:
So it's a cross that was carried by Catholics in Ireland during the Reformation times of the English and you weren't allowed to show outward signs of religiosity Catholicism there's at the bottom of it there's a little rooster, but it has a twofold meaning One for Peter's denial. But then, on the opposite, there was a legendary story that Judas, when he went home, his wife was cooking a rooster in a pan, basically, and he was all worried about Jesus coming back and getting in trouble with the wrath of God and so forth. And his wife said to him Jesus has as much chance of resurrecting and coming back as this rooster does, coming back to life in this pan or this pot. And then what happens? The rooster comes back to life. And then Judas despairs, but the same symbol for both of them, different reactions Despair versus asking contrition, forgiveness, writing your sins.
Father Chris:
And the rooster is a great Christian symbol. Because also many people place a little rooster in their nativity sets because when the cockroach is always at dawn right, Hopefully sometimes you hear roosters around here they're a little confused, but what happens at dawn? Christ is also born. We celebrate the birth of our Lord with the announcement the sun rises.
Father Chris:
Yeah, exactly. And so the rooster also announces not only his betrayal and the beginning of the passion, but his birth. And so it's taking the wood of the manger to the wood of the cross. And all of this is becoming encompassed in the Constantinian Basilica of St Peter's, prior to the current Basilica on the great windmill that was on top of it. The steeple was a massive rooster, and it was to remind both the people as pilgrims coming of Peter's denial, who is now enshrined in this basilica, but it's also to remind us of the times that we deny him when we hear him, and yet we continue to do our will rather than his, and that's where the conditions of discipleship are set forward.
Jordan:
So Jesus tells his disciples that the condition for discipleship is to deny oneself and take their own crosses and follow him. So how do we live out that discipleship today?
Father Andrew:
I find it in my own life. The thing that I really don't want to do is probably the thing I should do.
Father Chris:
And I think anyone who has ever trained for like an athletic event. You're not just going to go and run the 100 meter dash because you want it right. You have to prepare and get ready. And that's the same in our lives, in our spiritual lives that to do something worthwhile it takes time, it takes effort and we have to deny ourselves. You know, instead of going out for a big fancy dinner, we need to deny ourselves so that we can get up early and get our workout in or get extra study in. It's part of the human condition that we can't have everything we want, and that's the problem that we face so often today that everything must be instant and totally gratifying. If it's not, we just go for more and more and more and more. Have your cake and eat it too.
Jordan:
How do you think we should be amazed today that Jesus follows through this prediction and he goes to Jerusalem and dies for our salvation? Because I would kind of be like Peter and be like why are you doing this?
Father Andrew:
I think that we could be caught up that, like Jesus is God. So therefore, like he just does it Almost, like a automaton, like he's a robot just doing the Father's will. We have to remember that he's fully God and fully man, and so that there's a human and a divine will there. No human being wants to go and be crucified. So I think I'm amazed at the fact of Jesus following through on these things that he said that he would do.
Father Chris:
And I mean we see Jesus. He's filled with trepidation in the garden, you know, to the point where he's so scared that he's sweating blood. And scientists have been studying this. And it's a true phenomenon that when you're faced with such stress, such anxiety and such a visceral reality that's coming your way, your capillaries will literally burst in your skin. And so when we hear about Jesus sweating blood, he was to the point that no person wants to ever find themselves. And that was just the beginning and what he do. He cried out Lord, take this cup away from me, but if it's your will, I'll continue to do it. And he continues to go forward.
Father Chris:
And I think what's stunning is when we take a moment and pause and think that God himself became man yes, the incarnation is absolutely stunning but that God himself would die for creatures so that we could be restored back to him in communion. That's just for me. That's what changes everything. When you look at the church so often, people, well, how could you stay in that church? It seems so irrelevant. Well, it's not. When we see what God has done and what he's left us in his sacraments and in his church, that changes everything. That changes everything.
Jordan:
Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast. Don't forget to follow, like and subscribe to our show.