15 January 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18
On the Fridays of Denha the Church honours the great witnesses who made Christ known. Today we keep the memory of Peter and Paul. At Caesarea Philippi Jesus asks: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The answers are generous but too small: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Then comes the question no one else can answer for us: “But who do you say that I am?” Simon answers: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This is a moment of Denha, for Jesus says: “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” On this faith, and on the man who confessed it, Christ builds: “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” He gives him the keys of the kingdom and the power to bind and to loose. The ministry of Peter continues in the Pope, the Successor of Peter, who strengthens his brothers and sisters in this same confession.
The other readings show the apostles carrying the life of Christ into the world. In Joppa the disciple Tabitha, who “was devoted to good works and acts of charity”, falls ill and dies, and the widows show Peter the tunics she had made for them. Peter puts everyone outside, kneels and prays, and says: “Tabitha, get up.” She opens her eyes. Long before, Elisha had raised the Shunammite woman's son after praying behind a closed door; now Peter raises a daughter of the Church in the name of the risen Jesus, and “many believed in the Lord”. Paul, for his part, lists what his apostleship cost him: “Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked”, and on top of all this, “my anxiety for all the churches”. He boasts only of his weakness. Peter the rock and Paul the weak one, both martyred in Rome: through them the same Lord gives life and builds his Church.
Theme: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Peter and Paul: confession, life and weakness in the service of Christ.
“I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you.” Psalm 2:7
“He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”” Matthew 16:15–16
Apply: Each morning this week make Peter's confession your own.
“I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open.” Isaiah 22:22
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18
Apply: Pray daily for the Pope and our bishops.
“He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.” Isaiah 40:29
“If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” 2 Corinthians 11:30
Apply: Offer one weakness or suffering to Christ for the Church.
Christ builds his Church on Peter's faith.
Through the apostles' weakness he gives life to the world.
Take-home resolution: Confess Christ each morning and pray daily for the Pope this week.
Dear friends, on the Fridays of Denha the Church honours the great witnesses of Christ. Today: Peter and Paul, the pillars of the Church.
At Caesarea Philippi Jesus asks: but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answers: you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:15–16). Jesus says that this did not come from flesh and blood but from his Father in heaven. And he adds: you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church (Matthew 16:18).
Peter carries that faith into the world. In Joppa he kneels beside the body of Tabitha, a woman full of good works, and says: Tabitha, get up. And she opens her eyes (Acts 9:40). Like Elisha long before him, but in the name of the risen Jesus, Peter brings life.
Paul tells us what it cost him: beatings, a stoning, shipwrecks, hunger, cold, and the daily anxiety for all the churches. And he says: if I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness (2 Corinthians 11:30).
Both gave their lives in Rome. Let us pray today for the Pope, Peter's successor, and for our bishops. And let us answer Jesus' question from our hearts: you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Amen.
Children, Jesus asked Peter: who do you say that I am? Peter said: you are the Son of God! And Jesus called him a rock. Tell Jesus today: you are the Son of God, and I love you!
Lord Jesus, Messiah and Son of the living God, you built your Church on the rock of Peter and sent Paul to the nations through many sufferings. Through their prayers keep me firm in confessing you, generous in good works like Tabitha, and faithful in my weakness. Bless our Holy Father the Pope and all our shepherds. Amen.
On the Fridays of Denha the Church remembers those who made Christ known, and today she remembers Peter and Paul. The four readings move from a closed door to an open Church. Elisha shuts the door and prays, and a dead child wakes. Peter puts everyone out, kneels, prays and says, “Tabitha, get up.” Paul counts what the Gospel has cost his body. At Caesarea Philippi Simon confesses who Jesus is and receives a new name and the keys. The calendar also joins John 21:15–19 to the Gospel, where the same Peter is asked three times about his love. The key words of the day are prayer, weakness and rock: the apostles' strength is never their own.
Setting.
Elisha worked in the northern kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BC. The woman of Shunem, a village in the valley of Jezreel, had built him a small room on her roof, and he had promised her a son (4:8–17). Now the boy has died on her lap (4:20). She has laid him on the prophet's bed and ridden to Mount Carmel to find Elisha, refusing to leave him. Gehazi, the servant, has gone ahead and laid the prophet's staff on the child, with no result (4:31).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“So he went in and closed the door on the two of them, and prayed to the Lord.” (4:33)
Elijah did much the same for the widow's son at Zarephath (1 Kings 17:19–22). Jesus will one day tell his disciples to shut the door and pray (Matthew 6:6). The miracle takes place in hiddenness.
“and while he lay bent over him, the flesh of the child became warm.” (4:34)
Mouth on mouth, eyes on eyes, hands on hands: the prophet gives his whole self to the child. The cure comes slowly and he does not stop at the first sign of it.
“When she came to him, he said, “Take your son.”” (4:36)
Elijah, Elisha and Jesus all give a raised child back to the one who mourns (1 Kings 17:23; Luke 7:15). Nain, where Jesus raised the widow's son, lies close to Shunem on the same hill.
How the Church reads it.
Some early Christian writers saw in the prophet stretching himself over the small body a picture of the Son of God, who made himself small to give us life (in substance). The Catechism teaches that such raisings were real miracles and yet a return to ordinary earthly life, since those raised would die again; Christ's own Resurrection is of another order (CCC 646).
Setting.
After the conversion of Saul, Luke turns back to Peter, who is travelling among the believers on the coastal plain. At Lydda he has healed Aeneas (9:32–35). Joppa, the old port that is now Jaffa, lies a short journey away. These stories lead to the house of Simon the tanner (9:43) and on to Cornelius, the first Gentile household (Acts 10). The Church is about to grow beyond anything Peter had imagined.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them.” (9:39)
The best funeral sermon in the New Testament is preached without words, by women holding up what she had sewn. The early Church's care of widows is already seen in Acts 6:1.
“Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.”” (9:40)
Peter has seen this before. Jesus put the mourners out of the house of Jairus and said, Talitha cum (Mark 5:40–41). Peter copies the Master, with one difference: he kneels first, because the power is not his own.
“This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.” (9:42)
They believed in the Lord, and not in Peter. The sign points away from the one who performs it.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism lists clothing the naked among the corporal works of mercy (CCC 2447), and Tabitha is one of its first saints in practice. Her story also shows how the apostles' ministry continues the ministry of Jesus: the same gesture, the same word, and the same Lord at work through them (CCC 1506).
Setting.
Paul is defending his work against rival preachers in Corinth, whom he calls with irony “super-apostles” (11:5). They seem to have boasted of their eloquence, their descent and their visions. Paul finds this foolish, and so he plays the fool on purpose: if there must be boasting, let him boast. This “fool's speech” runs from 11:1 to 12:13. He then turns the usual list of achievements upside down, for what he lists is what he has suffered.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.” (11:24)
Deuteronomy 25:3 limits such a punishment to forty, and later Jewish law stopped at thirty-nine so as not to break the limit. Paul is writing as a Jew who still comes under the discipline of his own people, and he accuses no one here. He is listing his sufferings.
“Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea;” (11:25)
Beating with rods was a Roman punishment (Acts 16:22–23); the stoning was at Lystra (Acts 14:19). The famous shipwreck of Acts 27 came later and is not among these three. Acts, then, tells only part of the story.
“And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches.” (11:28)
After the rods and the sea, this comes as the heaviest burden. Every pastor and every parent knows what he means.
“If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” (11:30)
How the Church reads it.
St John Chrysostom, who loved Paul deeply, wrote seven homilies in his praise. He marvels that one man in a mortal body could bear so much, with joy (in substance). St Clement of Rome, writing near the end of the first century, already holds up Peter and Paul together as examples of endurance, and speaks of Paul's chains and his stoning (1 Clement 5). The Catechism recalls the word Paul heard in his weakness, “My grace is sufficient for you” (CCC 1508).
Setting.
Caesarea Philippi lay at the foot of Mount Hermon, by a source of the Jordan, in Gentile territory. Herod's son Philip had rebuilt the town and named it in honour of the emperor. There was an old shrine to the god Pan there. In a place full of other claims to divinity, Jesus asks who he is. This is the turning point of Matthew's story, for straight after it he begins to speak of the Cross (16:21).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”” (16:15)
Knowing what others say is not enough. The “you” is plural, and Peter answers for the group, but every believer has to give this answer in person.
“Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”” (16:16)
“For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” (16:17)
This is a moment of Denha, the showing forth of the Lord. Faith is first of all a gift. Peter did not reason his way there; he received it.
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (16:18)
Hades is the place of the dead, and its “gates” are the power of death. The Church, built by Christ, will not be swallowed by death.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (16:19)
“Binding and loosing” was a way of speaking about forbidding and permitting, and also about excluding and restoring. In 18:18 the same power is given to the disciples together.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that on the rock of the faith confessed by Peter, Christ built his Church (CCC 424), and that Peter's mission to keep this faith from failing and to strengthen his brothers rests on this promise (CCC 552–553). The office given to Peter is permanent and continues with the Pope, the head of the college of bishops (CCC 881–882; Lumen Gentium 22). St Leo the Great, preaching on the anniversary of his own election, says that Peter's firmness still lives on in the Church of Rome, and that the strength is Christ's (in substance).
Is the rock Peter himself, or Peter's faith?
The Fathers say both, and St Augustine notes in his Retractations that either reading can be held. The Catechism keeps them together: the Church is built on the faith Peter confessed (CCC 424), and Christ made Simon himself the rock of his Church (CCC 881). The two do not compete, because Peter is rock only as the one who confesses Christ.
Did Tabitha and the Shunammite's son live for ever?
No. They returned to ordinary life and died later. Such signs announce the Resurrection of Christ, but his is different: he does not return to this life, he passes beyond death (CCC 646).
Why does Paul boast at all, after saying that boasting is foolish?
He is using the rivals' own method to show that it is empty. His list of glories is a list of beatings. The irony teaches that an apostle is measured by love and the Cross, and not by success.
In the East Syriac year, the Fridays of Denha keep the memory of those who made the Lord known, and this second Friday belongs to Peter and Paul. As Thomas Christians we honour the Apostle who brought the faith to our land, and in today's Gospel we honour the rock on whom the whole Church stands. The Syro-Malabar Church lives its own East Syriac heritage in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. At the Holy Qurbana today we may pray for the Holy Father and for our Major Archbishop and bishops, that they may be like Peter in confession and like Paul in love for all the churches.