Fr. GORDON ALBION
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? What was He wanting them to think? He kept hammering home the lesson of God's fatherly love for each one of them and then stirred them by that mysterious: "I and the Father are one." Christ loved them all. He was proving that by His sympathy with the poor, His tender compassion for those stricken in body, His gentleness with the sick in soul. whom others treated as moral outcasts.
AND they, in turn, couldn't help loving Him, — as aman yet somehow more than a man. There was a difference which they couldn't exactly put into words, though they sensed it all right. It wasn't only what He did but what He said. He'd never argue or persuade. He simply taught.
He even added to the Law:
"Moses said to you of old, but I tell you . . ." He brought everything back to Himself in a way that would have sounded intolerably egoistic and arrogant in anyone but Him. "If you love me, keep my commandments ... He that loveth father and mother more than me isn't worthy of me. I am the Bread of Life." He'd demand faith in Himself and even forgive sins, which
With
surely was God's affair. "Who is this?" they asked themselves. 'He's obeyed even by the winds and the sea.' If they hadn't loved Him so much, they'd have been afraid. Yet they weren't afraid. He was too lovable, and loving, too approachable for fear. Who
could He be? There was an explanation but they hardly dare think it. Then suddenly He asked them point blank and Simon answered for them: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
It was the moment He'd been waiting for. It explained all that had gone before. He'd even told them in so many words that He was God, but all He had said and done had been leading them to the point where they would tell Him.
THAT'S what He wanted, an act of faith in Him. And now faith had come—through Peter, the first man to confess the Son of Man as God the Son. It was a grace from God the Father, as Christ was quick 'to point out — grace to be given to untold millions who echo Peter's Confession: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."