There are many questions that Jesus asks throughout the Gospels, but perhaps none is more important than the one he asks today: “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus first asks what other people are saying about him, but then he makes the question personal. Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It is easy for us to repeat Peter’s answer, but there are moments in life when those words are tested—moments when faith becomes more than something we profess and becomes a decision to trust God when we do not understand what he is doing.
I experienced one of those moments when I was nineteen years old. In July of 1997, my grandmother Dolores Bergevin was hospitalized with what initially seemed to be a moderate case of pneumonia. She was incredibly important to me. My father had died suddenly when I was less than a year old, and my grandparents helped raise me. My grandmother was like a second mother. She helped me with my homework, and we spent time together playing Scrabble, Cribbage, and other games. At first, we thought she would recover, but her condition steadily worsened. Eventually she needed a respirator, and over the following weeks her organs began to fail. I prayed and prayed for God to make her better, but she continued to decline.
Eventually something changed in my prayer. I stopped telling God what the answer had to be. I placed my grandmother completely into his hands and asked him to do what was best for her and to end her suffering. I had to trust that God would take care of her, even if that meant bringing her home to heaven. On August 18, 1997, we withdrew life support, and shortly afterward she died. That remains one of the most difficult experiences of my life, but looking back, I realize that Jesus was asking me the same question he asked Peter: Who do you say that I am when your prayer is not answered the way you desperately want? Can you still trust me when your heart is breaking? At nineteen years old, I certainly did not have all the answers, but eventually my prayer became very simple: “Lord, I put her into your hands.”
Perhaps that is one of the greatest professions of faith we can ever make. Faith does not mean that we will never be frightened or heartbroken, that every prayer will be answered as we hope, or that we will understand everything God permits to happen. Sometimes faith simply means trusting God enough to place into his hands what is most precious to us. And so today Jesus asks each of us, “Who do you say that I am?” Perhaps our deepest answer comes when life does not go according to our plans and we can still say: Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. I do not understand what is happening. I do not know what tomorrow will bring. But I trust you. Lord, I place it all into your hands.
