Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus asked his disciples two questions. The first was easy: who do people say I am? They gave the answers they'd heard - John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Smart guesses, all secondhand.

Then the second question: but who do you say I am?

That one belongs to each person alone. Peter answered from somewhere below conscious reasoning - not from what he'd been told or argued to, but from what had been given him. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, Jesus said. Your Father did.

On that answer the Church was built. The key of the House of David was placed on a man's shoulder. When he opens, no one closes. When he closes, no one opens. A peg in a sure spot.

Paul, at the end of his most intricate argument, can only do one thing: Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! For from him and through him and for him are all things.

Tonight at dinner: ask each person who do you say Jesus is? Not the catechism answer. Your answer, from your own life.

• For our family, that we would have Peter's answer ready - not borrowed from someone else but spoken from our own experience of who Jesus is, we pray to the Lord.
• For those in our family who know the right answer but have not made it their own, that the Father's own revealing would reach them, we pray to the Lord.
• In Our Lady's Thirty Days, for the intercession of the one who knew who he was from before anyone else did, we pray to the Lord.
• For those in our family whose faith has been tested by inscrutable judgments and unsearchable ways, that Paul's doxology would survive the testing, we pray to the Lord.

At dinner tonight: go around the table and ask each person who do you say Jesus is? Not the catechism answer - what do you actually know from your own experience? For small children: what is one thing Jesus did that you love? For older children and adults: what is the most real thing you know about him from your own life?

Let the answers be honest. Peter's answer came from the Father, not from preparation.

Isaiah's image is worth naming for your children: a peg in a sure spot, fixed so securely that things can be hung on it. The parent whose faith is a peg in a sure spot is the person the rest of the family hangs weight on. Your answer to the second question is what makes you that peg.