SECOND SUNDAY OF YEAR "B"

Second Sunday of Year "B"

John, 33 – 42: “You are to be called Cephas”

What does it mean to have an encounter that changes your life? Simon must have guessed that if Jesus claimed the right to call him by a new name, this meant that a relationship with him was a call to become someone different from the man he had been in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. The way that Jesus looked at him was probably enough by itself to justify his mysterious right to destine Simon to become someone other than who he thought he was. Jesus demonstrated that he understood Andrew’s brother completely: “You are Simon the son of John.” Jesus was calling him specifically to become someone else while still remaining himself. In an instant Simon realised that the entire distance between who he was and this “Cephas, Peter” he had to become was mysteriously bridged by the depth of those eyes, so gentle and so terrible, that were fixed on him. They were gentle because Simon had never felt so understood, accepted and forgiven. They were terrible because Simon had never understood so clearly how important his life and freedom were. Jesus was asking for everything he had, and it would have been so easy to tell him no and slip away from him forever.  He didn’t even have to say “yes” or “no”. He simply had to follow him. Jesus gave him no explanation, no plan. The only perspective he had to offer was the gaze that he fixed on him, seeming to cast him out toward a boundless future in which his new name – Simon Peter – would find its full meaning and completion. (The Simon of nature became the Peter of grace).

Dom Mauro Giuseppe Lepori, Cistercian Abbey of Hauterive near Fribourg, Switzerland.