Gospel for the Name: Renaming Peter

(Apparently, today is the Feast of the Sto. Nino in the Philippines. In this post, I'll follow the ordinary liturgical calendar)


"You are Simon the son of John;
you will be called Cephas" - which is translated Peter.
John 1:42

I always thought Jesus gave Simon the name Peter. In this version of the verse from John, apparently he just makes a prediction that Simon will be called Cephas/ Peter. In another verse (Matthew 16:18), Jesus says, "You are Peter, and upon this Rock, I will build my Church" (But of course, the translation says that maybe he meant, "You are the rock, and upon this rock, I will build my Church". So it wasn't a proper name)

But let's take today's Gospel first, "You will be called Cephas" which is translated as Peter, which is translated as rock.

I guess the practice of calling someone by names other than their own is pretty common until today. My wife and I have a friend we call "taong bato" (literally man-stone) because he looks like he's made of stone. Or we label people by calling them names like "nerd." Or we associate people with names of well known characters like "Adonis." And we even invent names for people like Brenda (brain-damaged).

Calling people by names other than their own is our way of getting a handle on people and by that standard, Simon didn't have too bad a handle.

And maybe Jesus predicted what people would call Simon because he foresaw that Simon would be the rock on which his church would be built. And by being given this name, Simon gets to internalize the role he would play in the church. Simon, son of John is who he is but Cephas is the role he would play, the handle people would know him by.