Our Spiritual Exercises, the things we do to know and discern the Will of God put us in good company with St. Peter in today’s Gospel.  Holy Mass, personal prayer and encounter with the Lord, Lectio Divina with the Word of God, the times praying as a community, the Rosary and any number of other devotions which help us draw closer and closer to God are the things we do to be able to answer the question: Who do you say that I am?  With Peter’s answer: the Christ of God, the Messiah, the Son of God.  Could we answer the question without all of these things?  Surely we could, but there would be little substance to that answer.  In our times of trial and tribulation, would we turn to the Son of God?  Maybe but maybe not.  Would we really believe and have faith that anything would be different than the physical and present reality we experience?  Or would we keep faint hope that maybe something else, something Divine was happening?  A lot of questions here, brothers, but the point I’m making is that what we do to strengthen our souls and configure them to the One True God, Father, Son and always with the Divine Assistance of the Holy Spirit, these exercises are not ever in vane.  We need to draw close to God in order to trust Him.  We need to trust Him in order to truly profess Him.  We need to believe in our whole heart, mind and soul that He is the Christ of God to profess Him the way that St. Peter and other Apostles do in today’s Gospel and we need to do that in order to give our life to Him and live it out by our proper vocation. Today’s Gospel and my own few thoughts here are not to inform any of you of something that you don’t already know – instead, they are meant to remind us and encourage each of us in the busyness of our lives of why we give ourselves to prayer each and every day.  May the Lord be with us, and may we give ourselves generously to Him and He assuredly will give Himself with the greatest generosity to us.