Once I knew what it was to rest upon the rock of
God’s promises, and it was indeed a precious resting place, but now I rest in His grace. He is teaching me that the bosom of His love is a far sweeter resting-place than even the rock of His promises.
- Hannah Whitall Smith (From mental conviction to contemplative rooting: let your soul rest in God
this day.)
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Genesis 9:1-13; Psalm 102:16-18, 19-21, 29 and 22-23 Mark 8:27-33 Jesus and his disciples left for the villages round Caesarea Philippi. On the way he put this
question to his disciples, ‘Who do people say I am?’ And they told him. ‘John the Baptist,’ they said ‘others Elijah; others again, one of the prophets.’ ‘But you,’ he asked ‘who do you say I am?’ Peter spoke up and said to him, ‘You are the Christ.’ And he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to
be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again; and he said all this quite openly. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. But, turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said to him, ‘Get behind me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’
Reflection on the Scriptures
In today’s gospel, Jesus turns the tables on the disciples by questioning them instead of responding to their questions. First, he asks: “Who do people say that I am?” An objective answer will do
here, allowing the respondent to remain aloof. But then Jesus made it personal: “Who do you say that I am?” We are good at evading questions like this. Sometimes it is considered polite to do so, as when your dear spouse asks for your opinion on the food that she worked so hard at making. But answering in the manner of, “On the one hand [this], but then on the other, [that]”, will not be satisfactory. (I am reminded of the joke that President Harry Truman, who
valued direct answers, once asked his staff to find a one-handed economist.)
Peter did not evade. He spoke his mind. But Jesus was also quick to show Peter that he may have expressed the right opinion, but his foundation for understanding why he was correct was surely lacking. Like Peter, we sometimes get ahead of our skis, making pronouncements about things that may not be the product of a complete understanding. Jesus’ response to Peter might have seemed harsh to Peter’s ears (after all, who likes to be called Satan – especially by the Lord himself?!?), but Peter and Jesus had a relationship that kept them going down the road together. Peter kept pondering,
learning, and growing in understanding in such a way that he would later live up to his name as the Rock, even though he would also fall short and deny his Lord along the way. Understanding takes time, and we need to be patient with ourselves and others. Let us follow Peter’s example when we have a difficult time in our faith. Step back and
live with the tension, looking in faith for answers that we may not yet have the capacity to understand. And while we wait, be sure to remember the dignity with which we are all clothed by God. Thanks be to God. -by Edward Morse
The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, by James Arraj
https://innerexplorations.com/catchtheomor/resurrecion.htm Inner Growth Publications, 2007.
Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus Archetypes and the Resurrection In a similar fashion, other critics have suggested that the psychology of C.G. Jung could explain the resurrection appearances. Even if we accept the value of apologetic arguments, writes Margaret Thrak, that the
disciples were not in a mental or emotional state of mind that would have produced the resurrection appearances, we have only ruled out what is happening on the conscious level of the psyche. Why can’t we say that the appearances were “in part due to the activation of the archetypes of the collective unconscious.”18 In short, archetypal forces in the unconscious of the disciples, unleashed by the death of Jesus, were projected out in the form of visions of Jesus as the risen Lord. Thrak, herself, offers an alternative to this view in which it is the real presence of the risen Jesus “which ultimately set the psychological processes in motion, enabling the unconscious mind to create and project the resurrection visions.”19 Then she suggests
that it might be possible to address both these alternatives by seeing that a more general question underlies them. Is God an absolutely transcendent being, or “only the dominant image of the collective unconscious”?20 And she concludes
that Jung’s archetypes are not a sufficient explanation for biblical theism, and Jesus’ disciples framed his resurrection not in an archetypal, but rather in a theistic language.21 If we combine these two lines of criticism, we can ask whether we can use Jung’s psychology to understand something like abduction by aliens, and if we succeed, can we then turn around and explain the resurrection
appearances in the same way? Aniela Jaffé in Apparitions and Precognition simplifies our task by examining the paranormal events contained in a series of 1,200 letters sent to the Schweizerischer Beobachter after a series of articles had appeared in the magazine about paranormal events, and the editor had requested similar stories from the journal’s readers. The responses were sent to Jung who gave them to Jaffé for analysis. Jung, himself, noted in his Foreword the twilight
atmosphere exhibited by these kinds of stories: “An integral ingredient of any nocturnal, numinous experience is the dimming of consciousness, the feeling that one is in the grip of something greater than oneself, the impossibility of exercising criticism, and the paralysis of the will.”22 And one letter-writer referred to her prophetic dreams as “the dark, uncanny thing”23 that she would rather be rid of. Jaffé divided the responses into different categories. There were, for example, striking
dreams in which a loved one appeared and bid the dreamer farewell, and soon after the dreamer awoke, he or she was informed of that person’s death.
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