Word to the Wise
Monday, February 22, 2010 - Chair of St. Peter the Apostle
[1 Peter 5:3-4 and Matthew 16:13-19]And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
This feast is not a feast of St. Peter but of all his successors! If we read about them, I suspect our feelings will be mixed. Some of them were saints and some were, to put it mildly, scoundrels. But the institution of the papacy has survived not only scoundrels but exile and imprisonment, plague and assassination (people are still trying!) and daily accusations of just about every kind. In more modern times - at least since the middle of the 19th century, the occupiers of the Chair of Peter have been fairly remarkable men, even if they have been a highly diverse group from Pius IX to Benedict XVI. Some served a long time (Pius IX and John Paul II) and some a very short time (John XXIII and John Paul I) but the length of their term was no determiner of their impact, as John XXIII (who called for the Second Vatican Council) demonstrated. All of them "made history" in some way (even John Paul I by the brevity of his term, about a month, if nothing else). If we recall Sunday's gospel about Jesus' temptation in the desert and the various ways in which that temptation was expressed, we will be able to show how various popes responded to those temptations and realize that God does not call perfect men to be pope, from St. Peter to the present day! The renaissance pope, Leo X, is reported to have said, "Since God has seen fit to give us the papacy, we propose to enjoy it!" (And "enjoy it" he did!) Nowadays, I don't think the popes would describe the experience as "enjoyable." It is a position of incredible importance and power. It unifies the church in the person of a single human being! If that is bothersome to any of us, we might think of the trouble caused when rival popes were elected! Whatever we may think of Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessors, today's feast calls our attention to something Christ ordained for the church which has helped it to find its way through history. If nothing else, this can strengthen our own faith in the Holy Spirit that no matter who is at the helm, the church will stay afloat! AMEN
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