Sometimes we find ourselves wondering what God is thinking when surprising things happen in our lives. I heard an interview on NPR with a person whose granddaughter was shot in the mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, and she was real candid that the death of her granddaughter, under such terrible circumstances, had shaken her faith. Why would God let such a thing happen, she seemed to be saying. It is a common reaction to such unexpected, and inexplicable, events. We have no good answers. We have a similar reaction sometimes to events that aren't so terrible, but are equally out-of-the-blue. The selection of Peter to head the Church which Jesus was building is one of those events, about which we read in today's Gospel (Mt 16: 13-23). Why in the world did Jesus pick Peter? He was probably quite uneducated-- a fisherman, after all. He was impetuous and undisciplined. He wasn't the closest disciple to Jesus. John seems like he was. Almost immediately after the choice, Peter quarrels with Jesus over jesus' teaching that the He would have to go to Jerusalem, suffer greatly at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes and be killed. Peter says that can't be right and Jesus' response is striking: He calls Peter "Satan." Paul will be much more effective at spreading the Good News, and Peter turns out to be on the wrong side of the debate over whether you have to be a Jew before you can become a Christian. So what was Jesus thinking? Maybe the answer is in the fact that Peter is the one to whom God has revealed the truth of who Jesus is. It is immediately after Jesus points out that fact that Jesus announces that He will build His Church on "The Rock." I wonder if the appointment of Peter, as unlikely as that choice might have been, isn't a simple act of trust in the Father on the part of Jesus. If Peter is good enough to get this Divine revelation, Jesus might have thought, he must be good enough to form the cornerstone of the new Church. Simple, pure trust in God's revelation might be the beginning and end of the explanation. And maybe that's all we can say about events like Dayton and El Paso. We can't provide any rational explanation or claim to know God's plan (in a sense seeking to do that is doing what Peter did when he challenged Jesus-- thinking "as human beings do"). Maybe all we can do is trust that our loving God is in charge and that in some way that is beyond us these sorts of terrible tragedies are part of God's working in the world. And maybe all we should do is pray for peace for those directly impacted, and for faith ourselves that we can hold on to our trust in God if we are ever in a similar situation.