(Fr. Paweł Ratajczak, OMI, Aug. 27, 2023)
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HOMILY: SUNDAY, AUG. 27, 2023
- Pastor's Blog
- Hits: 236
The Gospel brings us the profession of faith of St. Peter, and Our Lord’s commission to St. Peter to be the rock upon which the Church is built.
There is a great humility in Jesus asking the apostles, “who do people say that I am?” Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, asking for the word of human beings, mere creatures, asking what these creatures think of him. The Word that enters into dialogue with the human race, that asks for the opinion of his creatures. A profound humility and grace.
St. Peter offers his opinion – “you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Our Lord responds with a blessing: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Let us try to better understand its meaning.
St. Jerome says, “I believe that the gates of hell are sins and the vices” (Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, M.F. Toal ed., pg. 254, vol. III, 1959). Bede the Venerable echoes this thought: “the evil deeds of the believing, and their profane and idle talk, are also gates of hell, in as much as they point out to their applauders and followers the road to perdition” (Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, M.F. Toal ed., pg. 274, vol. III, 1959). So, the sins, vices, and the evil deeds of Christians can be compared with these “gates of hell.” Yet even they will not make the Church fall. Yes, these evils will make the example of the Church shine less brilliantly, they will obscure the witness of the “city built upon a hill,” but they will not cause the destruction of the Body of Christ, gathered as the Church.
Still, Bede the Venerable adds this warning: “Nor should we think that it is enough for salvation that in our works we are no worse than they mass of the careless and indifferent” (Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, M.F. Toal ed., pg. 275, vol. III, 1959). In other words, being no worse than the “average Joe,” is not enough for salvation.
There is yet another truth contained in the words of Christ.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, a Father of the Church, recalls, “First, He says that the Church is His…He also professes that He is the Founder of it, adding to it that it shall be unshakeable; for the Lord is the source of its powers: and He places Peter over it as Pastor” (Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, M.F. Toal ed., pg. 257, vol. III, 1959). So, Christ is the true founder of the Church, and as its founder, has the ability and authority to place St. Peter – and his successors, the Popes – as universal Pastors over the universal Church.
St. Augustine, another Father of the Church, adds: “And in like manner the strength of the Church is commended to us more particularly in Peter…And a certain weakness is also marked in him; for questioned by a maidservant, he denies the Lord…He finds out what he is; he who had thought too highly of himself.” St. Peter, in his strength and in his weakness, exemplifies the Church in her strength and weakness. St. Peter who stepped out of the boat in the storm, and started walking toward Christ, and yet, at a certain point, lost heart. St. Peter who said that he would die for Christ at the Last Supper, only to deny him during the Passion. St. Augustine recalls the fact that St. Peter “had thought too highly of himself.” May we be spared from the temptation to do the same, to raise ourselves up with spiritual pride, which dulls the zeal for evangelization, and causes our fall.
Despite St. Peter’s weakness, he still is the “permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion” (Lumen Gentium 18), as the constitution Lumen Gentium of Vatican II states. Here, the words of St. Rabanus Maurus, which may seem stark and rigoristic to us, still carry essential truths. St. Rabanus wrote, “Peter received in a special manner the keys of the kingdom of heaven…that all the faithful throughout the world might understand that all who in any manner separate themselves from the unity of the faith, or from communion with him, such should neither be able to be able to be loosed from the bonds of sin, nor to enter the gate of the heavenly kingdom” (Catena aurea, vol. 1, pg. 480, 2014).
I close with the words of a prayer written by a Successor of Peter from our own times: Saint Pope John XXIII. The prayer was written on the occasion of the Second Vatican Council. With it, the Pope asks, “Renew in our own days…miracles of a second Pentecost; and grant that Holy Church, reunited in one prayer, more fervent than before, around Mary the Mother of Jesus, and under the leadership of Peter, may extend the kingdom of the Divine Saviour, a kingdom of truth, justice, love and peace” (Pope John XXIII, Journal of a Soul, pg. 391, 1965).