By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Homily by Archbishop Thomas Wenski at Mass for day one of the 2025 Bridging the Gap Conference at St. Brendan High School with Archdiocese of Miami employees and volunteers. Friday, Sept 26, 2025.
Welcome to “bridging the gap” - in the Church we are to build bridges, not walls. And so, I appreciate your being here today. And while this could be marketed as “continuing education”, there won’t be any exams. But in today’s gospel, Jesus gives his apostles an exam so to speak. “Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am? Both questions are important: both for the apostles, and for each one of us if we are to understand and to embrace our call to be, in the words of the late Pope Francis, missionary disciples”.
Again, to be effective and credible missionaries we must be faithful and committed disciples. We have to know who Jesus is. In asking his apostles, “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus is not looking for an opinion; rather he is looking for an affirmation of firm faith, an affirmation that Peter, speaking for the rest of the apostles, gives.
“Who do you say that I am?” is the basic question whose answer defines our relationship to the Church and to the person of Jesus Christ. To make Peter’s faith our own is what makes us Catholic. “You are the Christ” is the first creed of the Church, the other creeds grow from it ; and it is through that creed that gives expression to the faith of Peter and the Apostles we can come to a true knowledge of who Christ is, a true knowledge that is not just knowing something about Jesus but is the knowledge of knowing Jesus. We can come to know Jesus because we believe what Peter believed, namely that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah of God.
Certainly, to be disciples we must know the Lord; but if we are also to be missionaries we also must also know the people to whom we are sent. And here other question on Jesus’ quiz is also important: “Who do people say that I am?”
Peter and the apostles answered with an early Palestinian version of an opinion poll. What Peter affirmed of Jesus was born of faith, but the crowds merely opined. The missionary disciple today must be ready to give an answer for the hope that is his or hers, but he or she does so in a world that is often indifferent to faith because it thinks it already knows. But lest we talk pass those to whom we announce Jesus Christ and for us to engage the world into which we are sent we must understand not only what people have to say about Jesus and his gospel but why they say what they say.
We might ask why Jesus after eliciting from the apostles a profession of faith would tell them not to tell anyone about him. You would have thought that they would be wanting to shout out from the housetops that they had found the Messiah. And of course, one day they would
Jesus wanted the apostles to understand what his being the Christ meant not on their terms but on his terms. For the apostles then and for us now the task of discipleship is accepting God’s terms and not insisting on our own. To proclaim Jesus is the Christ of God requires more than just some short-lived enthusiasm. “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.” Jesus is telling us that a faith without the cross is no faith at all; at least, it is not a faith that can save. Salvation will come through sacrifice, the sacrifice that awaits Jesus on Calvary.
It is that sacrifice that is re-presented on this altar – and all the altars of the world – every day, it is re-presented so that we through our communion in his Body and Blood may become more effective and credible missionaries, more faithful and committed disciples of the Lord.
