Lord's Day Reflection: Encounter Beyond the Crowd

By Fr. Marion Nguyen, OSB*

There is a great difference between knowing what people say about someone and knowing who that person truly is. We live in a culture saturated with opinions, judgments, and interpretations, yet all this talk can paradoxically make genuine recognition more difficult.

Perhaps this is why Jesus’ question to his disciples at Caesarea Philippi is so penetrating: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They give him the answers circulating among the crowds: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. The crowds recognize that Jesus is important, but they fit him into categories they already understand.

Then Jesus makes the question personal: “But who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus tells him that this knowledge did not come from public opinion or human reasoning: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father” (Mt 16:17).

St. John Chrysostom observes that Jesus first asks about the crowds precisely to expose the inadequacy of their answers. The crowd can talk about Jesus, but Peter recognizes him. Peter’s confession is not simply a better opinion; it is a gift of revelation. As Chrysostom writes, Christ “did not begin by saying, Who do men say that I am? but, Who do men say that the Son of man is?” He leads the disciples from the opinions of others toward their own confession of faith. (cf. Homily 54)

This is at the heart of Christian discipleship. We live surrounded by voices telling us who Jesus is, what the Church should be, and even who we ourselves are. Yet faith cannot ultimately rest upon the voice of the crowd. It must become our own confession: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Yet hearing the Father’s voice is not easy. The monastic tradition has long recognized the logismoi—the thoughts and impulses that can occupy the heart and draw us away from God.

If the crowd at Caesarea Philippi represents the noise of external opinion, the logismoi are something like a crowd from within: competing voices of thought, desire, and self-image that rise up in the heart and vie to answer the question “who are you?” before God ever gets the chance.

Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian understood that the spiritual life requires vigilance, because we can gradually become governed by whatever we repeatedly allow to occupy our minds and desires (cf. Praktikos, 6–14; Conferences, 5).

Perhaps the most recognizable forms of this inner crowd in our own time are distraction and vainglory. Our digital culture continually competes for our attention, while social media encourages us to measure ourselves against the lives and opinions of others—an outer crowd now internalized as a constant, low murmur of comparison and self-judgment. The result is a peculiar kind of exhaustion: we are surrounded by constant noise and ever-changing opinions, both outside us and within, yet increasingly hungry for quiet, simplicity, and space.

The monastic response is therefore not simply to escape the noise, but to cultivate a Petrine, attentive heart: a heart made capable of listening, receiving, and responding to what is true. Monastic life creates this space through humility, silence, stability, prayer, and attentive listening. It teaches us to become quiet enough to recognize the presence of God in the other.

Saint Benedict gives this a particularly beautiful expression in Chapter 53 of the Rule, where he commands that every guest be received as Christ himself: “Let all guests who present themselves be received as Christ” (RB 53:1). The monk must be attentive enough to recognize Christ when Christ comes to him—not merely in prayer or liturgy, but in the person standing before him.

This brings us back to Peter. Jesus does not simply congratulate him for getting the answer right. Immediately after revealing who he is, Jesus reveals who Peter is: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18).

The revelation of Christ immediately leads to a revelation of Peter’s vocation. Peter learns who Jesus is, and consequently discovers who he himself is.

The same is true for us. Our identity does not begin with the question, “Who do I want to be?” It begins with the question, “Who is Christ?” When we recognize him as the Son of the living God, we begin to understand ourselves as people called by him, given a place in his Church, and entrusted with a vocation.

Peter is not asked to silence the crowd outside him alone; he must also quiet the crowd within, so that one voice—the Father’s—can be heard and answered. So must we.

Perhaps, then, Jesus’ question to us is not simply, “Who do you say that I am?” There is another question beneath it:

Who are you after you have encountered me?

Peter learned who Jesus was, and in that revelation he discovered who he was called to become. So do we.

* Abbot of St. Martin Abbey—Lacey, Washington