Homily: 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time 

August 23, 2026

My dear brothers and sisters, from the readings of today, especially the gospel reading, the importance of our personal relationship with Jesus is so much highlighted. In this gospel, we heard the discussion between Jesus and his disciples, where Jesus asked his disciples this important question, “who do people say that the Son of man is?” Jesus did not stop at his disciples just mentioning the public or the popular or the street opinion about Him. Jesus was insistent on what seemed to be the main and more important question, “but you yourselves, who do you say that I am?” My dear people of God, it is never enough to know what people say about Jesus. A man may pass an examination on what has been said and thought about Jesus. This is not enough. Christianity is not knowing about Jesus but knowing Jesus. In the final analysis, what will be of supreme importance is not people’s opinion about Jesus but my personal relationship with Jesus.

It is often the case in life that many are lost in the crowd mentality, which prevents them from confronting the reality. This ‘everybody is doing it syndrome’ is one of the tools which the evil one uses to destroy Christians. There was a story of this group of high school final year students who were revolting and rioting against their school authorities. They were breaking and damaging the school glass windows, school furniture and emitting different types of atrocities from their mouths against their teachers. They found their security in their group, after all, it was a mob action, there would be no personal responsibility. They never knew that the security cameras recorded the whole incidence. The police later arrested all those rioting students, and they were detained in jail. It was inside the jail that they encountered the harsh reality of life, there was no group existence inside the jail, each of them rotted silently, sorrowfully and personally inside his/her cell. When the huge price of the damages was computed, the faceless mob group did not pay, each of the students had to cough out his/her own quota individually.

Dear brothers and sisters, it is unfortunate that a lot of issues about our religion, about Christ, about our faith seem to be sacrificed today at the altar of public opinion or public data on the internet. If for instance, if you ask a baptized and confirmed millennial or Gen Z about his/her Catholic faith, it may not be strange that the person may begin to perfectly tell you about the percentage of Mass of attendance in Canada in the 1950’s in relation to the present time and the statistics of decline at Mass attendance but the person may not be able to say anything meaningful on how many times he/she attended Mass in a year and received the sacraments. Shall we give an answer about percentages, internet statistics, public opinions before the throne of God? The truth is that on the Judgment Day, we may not be asked, ‘do your friends and colleagues practice their faith?,’ ‘was religious upkeep popular in your time?’ If through God’s omniscience, over eight billion persons can be in the world at the same time, yet each person will have a different fingerprint, facial outlook and possibly different DNA, then it will be a grave mistake for us to think that we are so many on earth for God to know our thoughts, words, actions and efforts individually.

The gospel reading of today tells us the mind of Christ for us: “but you yourself, who do you say that the Son of man is?” The emphasis is on this personal answer, the personal commitment to God, the personal relationship with Christ. It was Peter who gave the answer, you are Christ the Son of the Living God. One important question: Is this Christ the Son of the living God really living in us or perhaps is He dead in our lives. Jesus told Peter, that it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to him instead, it was a supernatural gift of faith from God the Father. For Christ to continue living in us, we really need this supernatural gift of faith. We need to nurture this faith through reading the word of God, drawing near to Jesus in prayers, in attendance to Mass, in the reception of the Sacraments. We need to keep alive this gift of faith by being in close association with fellow Christians that pursue the same goal in the Church. For this faith not to be lost in our difficult and challenging world, as Christ said in the gospel of today, we have to follow the direction of the human shepherds to whom Christ entrusted His Church and gave the power to bind and loose, that is Peter and the Apostles and through them the bishops and the priests of the Church.