There are people who have been part of our lives for years, and yet, if someone asked us who they really are, we might discover that we know only a part of them. We know what they do, the help they give, the things they say, the place they have in our lives. We can be close to someone and still not really know the person.\

Perhaps that is one of the quiet pains of human relationships. We care for people, support them, stand by them, make sacrifices for them, and sometimes assume that, because of all these things, they must know us. Yet if one day we stopped and asked, “Who am I to you?”, the answer might surprise us. Someone may know our actions without knowing our heart. Someone may know our presence without knowing who we are.

Something similar is happening in the Gospel. Jesus asks his disciples what people are saying about him. They answer with names they know: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. They recognize something in Jesus, but they still do not know who he is.

Then Jesus asks them a different question: “But who do you say that I am?” They have been with him. They have seen his compassion, his power, his closeness to people. They have also seen him rejected, misunderstood and opposed. They have walked with him through ordinary days and difficult moments. And yet, after all this, Jesus asks: “Who do you say that I am?”!
Perhaps knowing Jesus does not happen simply by collecting answers about him. Perhaps we begin to know him as life unfolds before us: in the people we meet, in the people who disappoint us, in those who need us, in those who love us, in moments of joy, in loss, in failure, in forgiveness, in our own struggles and in the questions we carry.

And perhaps to know Jesus, we also have to become honest about the people around us and about ourselves. Who are they to me? Who am I becoming? What do I see when I look at another person? What do I discover about myself when life becomes difficult?
They had been close to Jesus all this time, yet Jesus still asked them, “Who do you say that I am?” Closeness had not finished the journey of knowing him.

We can be close to Jesus and still not know him. We can even speak about him with certainty and yet be speaking about the Jesus we have created in our own minds.

Perhaps the question is not only, “Who is Jesus for me?” But: Do I really know Jesus, or am I busy defining him?