Yesterday Jesus spoke to the crowd, calling them an “evil generation” because of their lack of love for God, and He exhorted them to trust their hearts rather than their eyes, for there was something greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah standing before them. Today, on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter we see that great apostle daring to confess what he has seen in his heart, even though his eyes see only a Nazorean.
“But who do you say that I am?”
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”
Simon’s confession is a pivotal moment in his life, being so transformative that Jesus gives him a new name: Peter. The rock. In his heart Simon had listened to what Jesus taught, had pondered the deeper meaning of the amazing things he had seen with his eyes, and he did not question the vision that had formed in his heart that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. If only the crowd in yesterday’s reading had possessed such courage!
It would be this courage that would serve to be the foundation of the Church, for her chief song is the same that Peter first sang: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” That courage grounds the Church, gives her people the strength they need to confess the Gospel in every place, in every circumstance. Countless Christians have gone to their deaths singing Peter’s simple hymn; missionaries ventured into vast unknowns crying it aloud in the wilds. Saints hummed it quietly in cave and cloister; for two-thousand years the melody has varied, but the lyrics have remained unchanged. No effort by the world to silence the song has succeeded, nor come close.
In the great city where emperor’s once sat, hailed as sons of the gods, the successor of Peter now sits, governing the world-wide Church with wisdom and charity, not the son of God, but the friend of Jesus and his vicar. He is our Pope—our papa—a spiritual father teaching, guiding, and defending the many children of the Bride of Christ, feeding and tending the flock of Jesus as He charged Peter to do, keeping them together in the wastes of the world until the Good Shepherd returns again. How blessed we are to have the gift of the papacy, to have this head pastor, to have a captain at the helm of the ship! Even those popes who were truly poor shepherds never failed such that the song of Peter fell into silence, nor such that the walls of the Church came tumbling down. May God preserve His Church and His friend, the Pope, until Christ, the Son of the living God comes Himself to lead His sheep home!