Today’s readings: Zechariah 12, 10-11 – 13, 1; Galatians 3, 26-29; Luke 9, 18-24.

The question Jesus poses in today’s gospel to his closest disciples – “Who do you say that I am” – is the question that has been haunting us throughout the history of Christianity to this day. Luke in his gospel is reporting with hindsight the conflict on the true identity of Jesus which dominated the atmosphere among the 12 apostles.

When Luke was writing, the issue was still being debated, and through the succeeding centuries it continued to provoke heresies and divisions within Christian communities. In those early times, the Church was facing the challenges of new cultures, of emerging philosophies and movements of thought, even of a new language that was needed to break with the past and open up to the dawn of new times.

The early councils sought to resolve those conflicts by formalising doctrine into dogma, formulating its beliefs in defined doctrine and using condemnatory language and sanctions against heretics, excommunicating those who dared to differ. So the globalisation of religion, which started with Jesus who was vehemently critical of whoever monopolised faith and hijacked God, was being practically reversed.

Jesus refused to be hostage to a closed religion. He refused to be held as someone in line with the ancient prophets. He was not happy with who the crowds thought he was. Being who he was, he transcended the boundaries of religion.

Yet when Peter acknowledged him as “the Christ of God”, he gave the apostles strict orders not to tell anyone because he could easily imagine that for the moment it was beyond them to grasp the meaning of that.

This is also to some extent the situation in which we find ourselves today. The more we just repeat doctrine seems to be in no way connecting with our culture. The doctrines dished out to us about who Jesus Christ is, put Jesus in a frame, and translate the true identity of Jesus in a language that many a time is not comprehensible to people because very often it fails to link with people’s experience.

This is a major challenge facing the Church today. There is no one exclusive way of portraying Jesus or of grasping or transmitting his message. In the past the Church excelled in preaching and teaching about issues of morality, marriage, sexuality and about myriads of other subjects that fill our theology manuals.

Yet we seem to be failing miserably when we come to speak comprehensibly about who Jesus is, about God, even about the true meaning of life in the light of Jesus’ injunction to take up one’s cross every day and being his disciples. Just as at the time when Jesus asked the pivotal question, we seem to be confused on what really matters in our faith.

For too long we’ve been catechised to be Christians but seldom challenged to be disciples. So we live in times when we have forgotten what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

This is what the so-called new evangelisation is about. It has nothing to do with refreshing people’s memory about the catechism truths they once memorised. It has nothing to do with struggling to restore a Christian society and culture where the Church can once again live in its comfort zones free from the threats of diversity.

The task ahead for the Church is about making disciples, about resetting the compass. In the words of the first reading from the prophet Zechariah, it is about letting the spirit of kindness and prayer “be poured over the House of David and the citizens of Jerusalem”. The Church needs a fresh anointing with the Spirit to unblock itself from the constraints of religion and to open up to the living tradition of faith which is by nature dynamic and hence lends itself to ever new interpretations of what the Spirit might be prompting today.

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