Other Sunday and Holy Day Readings
2nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (Cycle B)
Readings:
1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19
Psalm 40:2, 4, 7-9, 10
1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20
John 1:35-42
Abbreviations: NABRE (New American Bible Revised Edition), NJB (New Jerusalem Bible), IBHE (Interlinear Bible Hebrew-English), IBGE (Interlinear Bible Greek-English), or LXX (Greek Septuagint Old Testament translation). CCC designates a citation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The word LORD or GOD rendered in all capital letters is, in the Hebrew text, God's Divine Name, YHWH (Yahweh).
The two Testaments reveal God's divine plan for humanity. Therefore, we read and relive the events of salvation history in the Old and New Testaments in the Church's Liturgy. The Catechism teaches that the Church's Liturgy reveals the unfolding mystery of God's plan as we read the Old Testament in light of the New and the New Testament in light of the Old (CCC 1094-1095).
The Theme of the Readings: The Call and the Response
The Church expresses the theme of the readings in CCC 858: "Jesus
is the Father's Emissary. From the beginning of his ministry, 'he called to him
those whom he desired ... And he appointed twelve, whom also he named Apostles,
to be with him, and to be sent out to preach.' From then on, they would also
be his 'emissaries' (Greek apostoloi). In them, Christ continues his own
mission: 'As the Father has sent me, even so, I send you.' The Apostles'
ministry is the continuation of his mission; Jesus said to the Twelve: 'he who
receives you receives me.'"
In today's readings, we have examples of individuals God called to take up a life dedicated to His service. In the First Reading, God called the prophet Samuel to serve Him when Samuel was still a child. In the Responsorial Psalm reading, attributed to David, we recall that, anointed to divine service when a child, David served God faithfully throughout the struggles of his life. Then, there is the example of St. Paul in the Second Reading, who, as the voice of God to the Corinthians, warned them of the dangers of immorality. The final examples are robust fishermen in the prime of life who left their occupation catching fish to become "fishers of men" for Christ. In each case, these very different individuals responded to God's invitation to serve Him in the same way. They gave up everything to follow a divine calling.
In the First Reading, Samuel, adopted as a son of the High Priest Eli when he was three years old, received a divine call to prophetic service when he was a child sleeping in the Sanctuary near the Holy of Holies that sheltered the Ark of the Covenant. The Lord called Samuel's name three times before he understood that it was the voice of God calling him. He responded to God's call the fourth time and submitted his entire life to God's holy service.
In the Responsorial Psalm Reading, attributed to David, he expressed his understanding that the Lord desired willing obedience and humble contrition from sinners. He acknowledged that the offering most pleasing to God was the sacrifice of self-interest in a relationship in which the love of God came before the love of self.
St. Paul admonished the Christian community at Corinth in the Second Reading to avoid acts of immorality. He reminded the Corinthians that they were reborn to a new life in Christ in the Sacrament of Christian Baptism, and their bodies became temples of the Holy Spirit. He told them that they had become members of Christ's Body and must live in an intimate relationship of holiness with the Lord, sharing in Christ's life and being "one spirit" with Him.
In the Gospel Reading, Simon (Peter) meets Jesus for the first time on the east side of the Jordan River, where St. John the Baptist was ritually immersing the covenant people in a baptism of repentance in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. John pointed out Jesus as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world" to the crowd, and Andrew, a fisherman from Galilee, sought out Jesus with a friend and spent the day talking with Him. Later, Andrew, convinced Jesus was the Messiah, took his brother Peter to meet Him, and the introduction changed their lives forever.
The examples of humility and self-sacrifice demonstrated in these men's lives serve as models of behavior for us on this side of salvation history. Theirs was the kind of pleasing sacrifice made to the Lord when one entirely offers up one's self as a Temple of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God. In responding to God's call, we acknowledge that our bodies, as St. Paul writes, "have been purchased at a price" by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the altar of the Cross. How often does God call us when we fail to recognize His voice or call to service? Listen for His voice with an open heart, and miracles can happen in your life, like the work of God in the transformed lives of the men in today's Scripture readings.
The First Reading 1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19 ~ God's Revelation
to Samuel
3b Samuel was sleeping in the Temple of the
LORD where the Ark of God was. 4 The LORD* called to Samuel, who answered,
"Here I am." 5 Samuel ran to Eli and said, "Here I am. You called me." "I did
not call you, "Eli said. "Go back to sleep." So he went back to sleep. 6 Again,
the LORD called Samuel, who rose and went to Eli. "Here I am," he said. "You
called me." But Eli answered, "I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep." 7At
that time, Samuel was not familiar with the LORD because the LORD had not
revealed anything to him as yet. 8 The LORD called Samuel again, for the third
time. Getting up and going to Eli, he said, "Here I am. You called me." Then
Eli understood that the LORD was calling the youth. 9 So he said to Samuel, "Go
to sleep, and if you are called, reply, Speak, LORD, for your servant is
listening." When Samuel went to sleep in his place, 10 the LORD came and
revealed his presence, calling out as before, "Samuel, Samuel!" Samuel
answered, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
19 Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with him, not permitting any word of his to
be without effect.>
*LORD in capital letters is a substitute for
the Divine Name YHWH in the Hebrew translation and usually reads as "Yahweh"
with vowels (IBHE, vol II, pages 715-16).
"Samuel" in Hebrew means "name of God" and appears twenty-four times in 1 Samuel Chapter 3. Samuel was the child born to a previously childless woman named Hannah. She prayed for a child and promised to dedicate her firstborn son to God as a perpetual Nazirite in His service (1 Sam 1:1-2:11; Num 6:1-8). When God granted her prayer, she kept her promise, brought Samuel to the Sanctuary at Shiloh, and gave him to the High Priest Eli when he was three.
3b Samuel was sleeping in the Temple of the LORD where the Ark of God was.
The desert Sanctuary was a tented area divided into three
parts (Ex 26:1-30). First was the courtyard with the Bronze Altar of Sacrifice
(Ex 27:1-8). Next, a tented enclosed area, the Holy Place, held the golden Lampstand
(Menorah), the gold-covered Table of the Bread of the Presence of God, and the
gold-covered Altar of Incense
(Ex 25:23-40; 27:9-21; 30:1-10). The Altar of
Incense stood before the Sanctuary's most sacred space, the Holy of Holies,
which held the Ark of the Covenant and was shielded from the Holy Place by a curtain
(Ex 25:10-22; 26:31-37).
Eli gave the child Samuel the duty of watching over the golden Lampstand (Menorah) in the Sanctuary's Holy Place at Shiloh (Ex 37:17-24). Samuel's task was to ensure that the seven oil lamps in the Menorah did not burn out. According to the Law, it was the priests' duty to keep the oil lamps of the Menorah continuously burning in the Sanctuary (Lev 24:2-4). Only the chief priests could enter within the Holy Place of the Sanctuary. That Samuel was allowed to perform this duty shows that he was fully incorporated into Eli's priestly family. However, it also indicates that Eli was not obedient to the Sanctuary laws (1 Sam 2:27-31). Even if Samuel was considered Eli's son, he was too young to perform this sacred duty (Num 4:35).
The Holy of Holies, the sacred space beyond the Holy Place (to the west), contained God's dwelling place with His people, the Ark of the Covenant (Ex 25:10-22). The high priest could enter this sacred space once a year on the Feast of Yom Kippur (Feast of Atonement; Lev 16:1ff). The Ark of the Covenant was behind a curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place where Samuel was keeping watch. Perhaps Yahweh called to Samuel from inside the Holy of Holies behind the curtain. See the plan of the Sanctuary and its Tabernacle.
Yahweh called Samuel four times, but the first three times, Samuel did not understand that the Lord God was calling him. The three/four pattern in Samuel's call to service is a familiar pattern in Scripture. For example, see Judges 16:7-21 in Delilah's three unsuccessful attempts to subdue Samson, which was successful on the fourth try. Also, see Matthew 12:40, 41; 16:4 and Luke 11:29, 30, 32 in Jesus's three times repetition of comparisons to the prophet Jonah and the fulfillment in the fourth "sign," that was Jesus's death, burial, and Resurrection. In each "calling," Yahweh says Samuel's name twice, repeating it eight times. In the significance of numbers in Scripture, eight is the number signifying rebirth and salvation. The double calling of a name is how God called Abraham in Genesis 22:11, Jacob in Genesis 46:2, and Moses in Exodus 3:4.
In verse 9, Eli instructed Samuel to answer God using His Divine Name (YHWH = Yahweh). Samuel followed those instructions, speaking God's Divine Name and saying, "Speak Yahweh; for your servant is listening" (in the Hebrew text). The false piety introduced centuries later that forbade the speaking aloud of God's Divine Name outside the Temple liturgical services or writing God's Divine Name does not appear in Sacred Scripture. God's Divine Name appears regularly written and spoken aloud by people in the Biblical narrative about 6,800 times. It first appears in the Creation narrative in Genesis 2:4b. Eve is the first person recorded in Scripture to speak the Divine Name aloud in Genesis 4:1. God told Moses that YHWH (Yahweh) was the name by which all generations should call upon Him: This is my name for all time, and thus I am to be invoked for all generations to come (Ex 3:15b NJB).
10 the LORD came and revealed his presence, calling out as before, "Samuel, Samuel!"
In the fourth calling in verse 10, God came and stood,
"reveling His presence" near Samuel, whereas earlier, there was only God's
voice "calling." Perhaps this suggests that God had previously called Samuel
from behind the curtain that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies,
where God dwelled on the Ark of the Covenant's Mercy Seat between the golden cherubim
(Ex 25:17-22). However, when the boy responded, God came out from behind the
curtain to reveal Himself to Samuel. Scripture records that Samuel's revelation
involved a vision of God's Divine Presence (verse 10). 1 Samuel 3:15 records
that Samuel was afraid to tell Eli about "the vision" (other translations have
"what he saw").
19 Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with
him, not permitting any word of his to be without effect.
That day, Samuel began his service as Yahweh's divine
prophet, whose mission was to speak the words of God to the covenant people. It
was a mission to which Samuel remained faithful all his life.
Responsorial Psalm 40:2, 4, 7-9, 10 ~ Humility and
Obedience is the Valued Sacrifice
The response is: "Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will."
2 I have waited, waited for the LORD, and he stooped
toward me and heard my cry. [...] 4 And he put a new song into my mouth, a hymn
to our God. [...]
Response:
7 Sacrifice or offering you wished not, but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Holocausts or sin-offerings you sought not; 8a then said I, "Behold I come."
Response:
8b"In the written scroll it is prescribed for me, 9 to do your will, O my God,
is my delight, and your law is within my heart!"
Response:
10 I announced your justice in the vast assembly; I did not restrain my lips,
as you, O LORD, know.
Response:
This psalm, attributed to David, expresses his gratitude for what God has done for him. He begins by confessing his distress while waiting for Yahweh to help him. The Lord heard David in his time of need and delivered him. In response, David expressed his gratitude as God inspired him to sing "a new song," a hymn of praise to God (verse 4).
7 Sacrifice or offering you wished not, but
ears open to obedience you gave me. Holocausts or sin-offerings you sought not;
Through his intimate relationship with the Lord, the psalmist/David
understands the true meaning of sacrificial offerings made in the liturgy of
worship. It is not the animal the Lord wants as a sin sacrifice. Yahweh wants the
willing obedience of the offerer to live within the boundaries of His
commandments. And God wants the humble repentance of the sinner whose true offering
is the sacrifice of self-interest in a relationship in which the love of God
comes before the love of self (verses 7-8).
8 then said I, "Behold, I come. In the
written scroll, it is prescribed for me, 9 to do your will, O my God, is my
delight, and your law is within my heart!"
In verses 8-9, the psalmist/David addresses God directly, announcing
that his joy comes from living in obedience to the Law's precepts. The Law
isn't just words on a page (scroll), but the path of life God has spiritually engraved
on his heart.
10 I announced your justice in the vast
assembly; I did not restrain my lips, as you, O LORD, know.
In addition to keeping the commandments, the psalmist/David
understands that his dedication to God must be active, not passive, vocal, and
not silent. He must proclaim the goodness of God in the liturgical assembly of
worship, testifying to others about the good things God has done for him. Living
in obedience and testifying to God's works is the visual and active commitment that
Jesus spoke of in His last discourse after the Last Supper. Jesus said, "If
you love me, you will keep my commandments (Jn 14:15). And it is what St. James
encouraged in his New Testament letter to the universal Church, writing, For
just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead (Jam
2:26).
The Second Reading 1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20 ~ The
Body of the Baptized is the Temple of the Holy Spirit
13c The body is not for
immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body; 14 God raised the
Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15a Do you not know that your bodies
are members of Christ? [...] 17 But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one
Spirit with him. 18 Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is
outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Do you not
know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have
from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been purchased at a
price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.
St. Paul condemned the sin of fornication (sexual relations outside the Sacrament of Marriage) and explained how gravely offensive this sin is to Christ, who calls all Christians to a life of holiness. He reminded the Corinthians that they have been reborn to a new life in Christ in the Sacrament of Christian baptism, and their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. They have become members of Christ's Body to live in an intimate relationship of holiness with Him, sharing His very life (Gal 2:20) and being "one spirit" with Christ (Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 12:27).
Therefore, Paul wrote that Christians are responsible for keeping the temples of their bodies holy. They have no right to abuse their bodies with sins of immorality. Their bodies "have been purchased" with the sacrificial blood of Christ. And they have the promise that, like Christ, their bodies (and ours) will be resurrected "on the last day" when Christ returns (1 Cor 15:35-42, 51-53; 1 Thes 4:13-16; CCC 366).
The Gospel of John 1:35-42 ~ Andrew and Simon Peter meet
Jesus
35 John was standing with two of his
disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by, he said, "Behold, the Lamb of
God." 37 The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus. 38 Jesus
turned and saw them following him and said to them, "What are you looking for?"
They said to him, "Rabbi," which translated means Teacher, "where are you staying?"
39 He said to them, "Come, and you will see." So they went and saw where Jesus
was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the
afternoon [about the tenth hour]. 40 Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was
one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus. 41 He first found his own
brother Simon and told him, "We have found the Messiah," which is translated Anointed
[Christos]). 42 Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said,
"You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Kephas" (which is translated
Peter [Petros = rock]).
[...] = Greek translation, IBGE, vol. IV, page 250.
St. John the Baptist had disciples. They were a group set apart by his ritual baptism of repentance. They followed him, had fasting rules (Mk 2:18; Lk 7:29-33), and their own prayers (Lk 5:33, 11:1). Some of them continued as the Baptist's disciples after his death (Mk 6:29; Acts 19:3). Others became Jesus's disciples like St. Andrew and his unnamed friend, who the Church Fathers identify as St. John Zebedee (Jn 1:35-40).
"Behold, the Lamb of God"
This declaration was the second time the Baptist identified
Jesus as a sacrificial lamb; see John 1:29, where John identified Jesus as "The
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." The word for lamb in the
Greek text is amnos. It occurs in John's Gospel only here in verse 35 and
in verse 29. It appears nowhere else in the New Testament except in Acts 8:32
and 1 Peter 1:19. The other word used for "lamb" in the New Testament is arnion,
an archaic form that can be translated as "a little lamb." Arnion is
found once in St. John's Gospel (21:15) and 29 times for Christ in the book of
Revelation for a total of 30 times. It is a word specifically used by St. John
to identify the glorified Redeemer, and this distinction may be why it does not
appear in the pre-glory narrative.
37 The two disciples heard what he said and followed Jesus.
One of the Baptist's disciples mentioned in verse 37 is
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. The other is unnamed, and we later learn
that they both became Jesus's disciples. Most scholars, ancient and modern,
identify the Apostle John Zebedee (believed to be the inspired writer of this
Gospel) as the Baptist's unnamed disciple. The lists of the Twelve Apostles in
the Gospels name Simon, Andrew, James, and John as the first four. The Synoptic
Gospels mention these same four as the first disciples called by Jesus while
fishing on the Sea of Galilee (although St. Luke leaves out Andrew). The
repeated order of their names in the lists may suggest a priority of
discipleship, listing those who first answered the call in order. If so, there
is a case for identifying the "unnamed" disciple as John Zebedee.
In this passage, we have information that is not in the Synoptic Gospels. For the first time, we realize that some of the Apostles knew Jesus before He began His ministry in Galilee and called them to follow Him when He saw them fishing and mending their nets near the sea. This information makes their eagerness to leave everything and follow Him in the second encounter in their call to service in Galilee appear more reasonable (Mt 4:18-22; Mk 1:16-20; Lk 5:1-11).
38 Jesus turned and saw them following him
and said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi," which
translated means Teacher, "where are you staying?" 39 He said to them, "Come,
and you will see." So they went and saw where Jesus was staying, and they
stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon [about the tenth
hour].
John was writing this Gospel for a late 1st-century
congregation in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) composed of Gentile Greek/Roman
culture converts for whom Greek was the common language. Gentile converts were unfamiliar
with Jewish customs, so he explained the meaning of the word "Rabbi."
It was about the tenth hour.
What time is the "tenth hour" in this passage? Is the
inspired writer using the Jewish or the Roman method of marking time? Is he
speaking of time literally or symbolically? If his reference is symbolic, ten
is the number signifying divine order, indicating that it was the perfect time
in God's divine plan that these men came to Jesus. But the tenth hour is
probably meant both symbolically and literally. See the chart on the daily time
divisions in the 1st century AD.
In the Jewish method of marking time, the day began at sundown, with the entire day divided into two divisions of twelve hours. The twelve nighttime hours were divided into four Watches (of three hours each) during the Roman occupation (before the Roman occupation, the Jews kept three Night Watches). Jesus named the four Night Watches as evening, midnight, cockcrow, and dawn (Mk 13:35). The twelve seasonal daytime hours (divided between sunrise and sunset) corresponded with the Tamid liturgical worship service and sacrifice in the Temple that began with selecting the Tamid lamb at dawn, the first hour. The other Gospels use Jewish time, and, according to the Jewish reckoning, the tenth hour would be about 4 PM our time, late in the afternoon, but it was evening, near the end of the day, for the Jews (the Jewish day ended at sundown). If the disciples of John the Baptist stayed with Jesus "that day" (verse 39) until sunset, there wasn't much daylight left with the Jewish day ending at sundown, which was the seasonal hour of about 6 PM or, in Jewish time, the 12th hour, that only gave them two hours of conversation. For the times and a description of the two Tamid liturgical worship services, see the book "Jesus and the Mystery of the Tamid Sacrifice."
If St. John the Apostle was the inspired writer (as testified to by the early Church Fathers and Church documents), his church at Ephesus, where he wrote his Gospel, was the third most important Roman city in the Empire after Rome and Alexandria. The geographer and historian Strabo lists Ephesus as the second most important city after Rome. The Roman pro-councils of Asia resided in Ephesus. The Roman day began at midnight (we keep Roman time). It had two 12-hour divisions from midnight to noon and another from noon to midnight. Why would St. John use Jewish time for his mixed Jewish and Roman audience? He also took the time to explain Jewish terms to his Gentile congregation in his Gospel (Jn 1:38; 1:42). He even used Roman geographic terms, referring to the Sea of Galilee as the Sea of Tiberias (Jn 6:1, 23, 21:1). The tenth hour of the day Roman time was 10 in the morning, which would give the men who stayed with Jesus the majority of the day to talk with Him. John will also use Roman time in John 19:14 to identify the sixth hour (6 AM = dawn) as the time Jesus came before Pilate in agreement with the Synoptic Gospels.
40 Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus. 41 He first found his own brother Simon and told him, "We have found the Messiah," which is translated Christ. 42 Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Cephas," which is translated Peter [petros = "rock"].
"Cephas" is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew/Aramaic name Jesus gave him, which was "Kepha" or "Rock," or perhaps expressed in Galilean Aramaic as "Qepha"; it appears as "Petros" in the Greek text of the other Gospels and New Testament books. Only St. John's Gospel gives this form of Peter's new name/title, but it is also a name St. Paul used in addition to "Petros" when he refers to Peter (see, for example, Gal 2:9, 11). Notice that John gave the Greek translation of Messiah (Anointed One) and also the Aramaic Cephas/Kephas, which he explains, for his Greek-speaking Gentile-Christian audience, "is translated Petros" in Greek (verse 42).
St. John's Gospel uses the Greek form "Petros," which we translate as Peter. St. Peter would have been well-known to the churches of Asia Minor when St. John the Apostle wrote the fourth Gospel (it was the last Gospel written). Therefore, he used the Greek translation of "Rock" (Peter's title) in the masculine form as "Petros/Peter" along with the Greek name "Simon," which is similar to his Hebrew name. "Symeon" would be a better Greek transliteration for his Hebrew name, Sim'on. Since Scripture never refers to Peter by the Hebrew name (usually translated as Simeon or Symeon in English), and since his brother Andrew did not have a Hebrew name equivalent, it is possible that people only knew the brothers by their Greek names.
Another possible translation for verse 41 is Andrew was
the first to find his own brother.
Many scholars have interpreted this reading to imply that
the unnamed disciple (perhaps John Zebedee) had also gone to find his brother
(James), who would become an Apostle.
Andrew told his brother: "We have found the Messiah!" In St. John's Gospel, he gave his good friend Andrew the credit as the first of the disciples to identify Jesus as the Messiah. In the account concerning how John came to write his Gospel, the Fathers of the Church relate that Andrew received God's revelation that John should record his memories of Jesus (see the Muratorian Fragment, a copy of a more ancient document written c. 155 AD).
Jesus said, "You are Simon, the son of John"
Here we have an interesting problem. In John's Gospel, he
identified Simon Peter as the son of a man named John four times (here and in Chapter
21 in verses 15-17, three times). However, the Gospel of Matthew 16:17 identifies
Simon Peter as the "son of Jonah." Modern scholars usually offer one of two
explanations:
John and Jonah are hardly the same names. In Hebrew Yonah/Jonah means "dove" (an amusing name for that Old Testament prophet who was most un-dove-like), and John is from the Hebrew root word hen, which means grace, and the Hebrew word hesed, from the root hen, meaning gracious, faithful, merciful love.
Is there an error in Scripture, or is there another explanation? The Church teaches that Sacred Scripture is without error (CCC# 107), and the Fathers of the Church taught that if there seems to be a conflict or discrepancy in Scripture, the error is with the interpretation. The conflicting passage is Matthew 16:17, where Jesus, talking to Simon Peter, says: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah." However, St. John's Gospel identifies Simon as the "son of John" four times (Jn 1:42; 21:15, 16 and 17). The passage in Matthew 16:17 is the only time in Scripture that Simon is identified as the "son of Jonah." If Simon is not the son of a man named "Jonah," why would Jesus refer to him this way? It is essential in Scripture study to remember that "a text without a context is only a pretext!" The question is, what has preceded this questionable passage in Matthew 16:17?
In previous Matthew chapters, Jesus spoke about the Old Testament prophet Jonah. In Matthew 12:39-16:4, there are six references to Jonah found in five verses: see Mt 12:39, 40, 41 [twice]; 16:4, and also in verse 17, the sixth reference is to Simon Peter where Jesus finished by using the Aramaic word for "rock," which is kepha in the Greek translation: "So I now say to you: You are Peter [Kepha] and on this rock [kepha] I will build my church [ekklesia]" (Mt 16:18). The key to understanding why Jesus called Peter the son of Jonah comes from the building up of the Jonah passages that come before his final announcement of Simon as Kepha = Rock in Aramaic. What is Simon Peter's connection to the 8th-century BC prophet Jonah? All the previous passages recount Jonah's mission as God's holy prophet to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. They also compare Jonah's three days in the belly of the great fish/whale and his release to Christ's entombment and resurrection, which will be the "sign" of the completion of Jesus's mission of redemption for humanity.
The question is, what will be similar in Simon Peter's mission as God's emissary to link him to Jonah's mission? God sent Jonah to the Gentile city of Nineveh, the capital of the world's superpower in the 8th century BC, the Assyrian Empire. His mission was to preach repentance to the Gentiles, and salvation was only through the One True God. St. Peter would be sent to Rome, the Gentile capital of the world superpower, the Roman Empire, with a mission to convert the Gentile Romans, and through them, the Church of Jesus Christ would convert the rest of the Gentile world.
Abraham was the physical "rock" from which the children of Israel came (Is 51:1-2), but Peter will be the spiritual "Rock" who is the father of the New Covenant children of new Israel that is the Universal [Catholic] Church! When God changed a person's name (for example, Abram to Abraham or Sarai to Sarah), it indicated a change in destiny. Simon's name change revealed God's plan for Simon's destiny. He would become the "rock," signifying a firm foundation, upon which Jesus's Kingdom of the Church would be built (Mt 7:24-27). Then, there is the etymology of Jonah's name; Jonah means "dove" in Hebrew. Peter is also the "son of the dove" = ben yonah in Hebrew (bar yonah in Aramaic). In the New Covenant, the dove became the symbol for God the Holy Spirit, revealed in Jesus's baptism (Mt 3:16; Mk 1:10; Lk 3:22). Peter was undoubtedly the "son of the Holy Spirit," for God the Holy Spirit revealed Jesus's true identity as the Messiah and Son of God to Simon Peter (Mt 16:17).
Catechism References (* indicated Scripture quoted or
paraphrased in the citation):
1 Samuel 3:9-10 (CCC 2578)
Psalm 40:2 (CCC 2657); 40:7-9 (CCC 462); 40:7 (CCC 2824)
1 Corinthians 6:13-15 (CCC 1004), 6:14 (CCC 989*); 6:15-20 (CCC 1255*); 6:15-16 (CCC 796*); 6:15 (CCC 1265*); 6:19-20 (CCC 364*, 1004); 6:19 (CCC 1265*, 1269, 1695*)
Peter, head of the Apostles (CCC 552*, 765*, 880*, 881*)
Peter's faith in Christ (CCC 153*, 424*, 440*, 442*)
Following Christ (CCC 520*, 618*)
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