In today’s gospel, Jesus gets angry with Peter. Jesus tells the apostles that as the Christ (in Hebrew “Messiah” or in English “Anointed One”), he will suffer, be killed and rise after three days. Peter doesn’t want Jesus to talk like that. That’s when Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” Why does he say that?
Plain and simple, Satan opposes Jesus. Satan turns his back on anything to do with God and walks the other way. By telling Peter to get behind him, he is telling him that by denying his suffering, death and resurrection, he’s headed the wrong way. He’s not following, but forging ahead in the opposite direction—and that’s not a great place to be. Satan wanders into emptiness; followers of Christ are led into life.
At that point, Peter is faced with a decision. He had to either turn his thoughts and attitude around, or walk away. It reminds us of what we heard proclaimed a few weeks ago. We heard Peter’s response to another difficult saying of Jesus’ about eating his flesh and blood.
Instead of walking away from the difficult teaching, his decision was to turn to follow Jesus. Peter says what we’ve come to say: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6:60)
Following Jesus isn’t always an easy road. We will face our own crosses. Jesus doesn’t want us to think that our human experience is void of sin, or suffering, or hurt or pain. The crosses may come. But we don’t face them alone. We face them with Jesus, God the Son, the Christ. He brings us through the suffering to the resurrection.
Getting behind Jesus leads us to a place of inner strength.
Prayer Has Lifted Us Up! Thank you to everyone who made our day of prayer such a meaningful one. We were blessed to be home to the travelling statue of Our Lady of Fatima on September 10, and to have the opportunity to pray for peace—in our Church, in our world and country, in our parish, in our school and in our lives. We lifted up our prayer through the intercession of Mary, Our Lady of Fatima, who brings our prayer to Christ.
Thank you to those who went out of their way to make it a special day for us, especially Eddie Fong and Lydia Torres our chairs for the day. Thanks go to our Mrs. Ebert and her 8
th Graders for all they did to make our Morning Prayer Service so special, along with our homeschool families. Thanks to our choir, musicians, art and environment crew, liturgical ministers, hospitality crew, and prayer warriors in 6 different languages. Thanks to the Knights of Columbus for carrying the statue and being present.
It’s Time for A Taste of St. Hubert! Save the evening of October 6
th. After our 4:30 PM Mass, we’ll have a chance to sample some of the foods from the different ethnic cultures that make up the diversity of St. Hubert. A taste of St. Hubert, is a taste of all that’s good about St. Hubert.