ET TU, BRUTE !

Very often, in life, we miss the beauty of certain ‘subtle’ delicacies, because of the rush of time. We take too many things forgranted; we have become a ‘cog’ in a huge machine.  We are too much in a hurry to stop, look, and appreciate the majestic beauty of the sunrise, or of the setting sun; the fresh breeze of early Spring; the smell of the first rain. Sometimes we are ‘too blind’ though we can see. At times, though we hear … but alas, very often we do not listen, we do not think, ponder on the meaning of simple statements, which we take forgranted.

This applies to next Sunday Gospel text, when Christ asked his apostles, who do the people say or think that He is. It’s not enough reading that the people said that ‘Christ could have been the Baptist come to life’ or that others think that ‘He could have been Elijah’. What these declarations really meant was that Christ was only the one preparing the way for the expected Messiah, ergo He was not the expected One, not the Messiah.

But let us recall what Peter declared when asked by Christ. Peter did not simply add another, a more lofty name given by the people; HE was not the Baptist, not even Elijah or some other ‘prophet’. Peter said: “You are Christ.” In that declaration he expressed something special, something different from what the people had declared. Peter declared that Christ was not a forerunner, he boldly denied that somebody else was expected. He asserted that the decisive point of history had come, and that Christ, the bearer of the ‘new’ had come in this man Jesus, who was walking with them in the dusty  village streets of Palestine. NOW was the point in time.

These are the subtleties, the fine tuning: the beauty of a sunset, the Spring breeze, which can be realised with open eyes and ears, with full awareness. We must stop and think, dig deep until we penetrate the cover, the obvious, and find the hidden treasure.  Yes, Caesar said those famous last words: ‘Et tu, Brute’’. But these three simple words, whole volumes can be written about them. Those three words were a ‘flashback’ for Caesar, his close friendship with Brutus, etc.

What sometimes seems or sounds so ‘obvious’, especially in the Holy Scriptures, is not what we understand at first hearing. In music, one note can be applied to various compositions, but if that one note is accompanied by a chord (three or more notes, major or minor) it changes its whole effect, meaning.

When Peter declared Him as the Christ, he designated Him as the One who was to bring the liberation of Israel, the long-awaited One, the victory of God over the nations, the transformation of the human hearts and the establishment of the Messianic reign of peace and justice.

The greatness and the tragedy of the moment in which Peter uttered these words are visible in the reaction of Jesus. HE forbade them to tell anyone about Him..