Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of the Chair of St. Peter
February 22, 2021
1 Pet 5:1-4, Ps 23, Mt 16:13-19
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- In today’s Gospel, we have a double confession. Inspired by God the Father, Simon confesses Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. Jesus in return gives another, almost equally striking confession: You are kepha (the Aramaic means both the name “Peter” and the thing “Rock”), you are Rock and on this Rock, on you, I will build my Church and the gates of Hell won’t prevail against it. Christ the Cornerstone built his Church with an architectural plan and the foundation of the Church would be Peter. That means that if we’re going to be truly Christian, fully Christian, we need to build our faith in Christ not just on Christ but on his building it on Peter. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed to God the Father, “Grant that no tempests may disturb us for you have set us fast on the rock of the Apostle Peter’s confession of faith.” God has made our faith steadfast on the Rock’s profession of faith, and therefore our growth in faith, our deepening in the Christian life, is directly linked to Peter, to the office of the Papacy, and to the responsibilities Christ gave him he passed on to his successors.
- Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the “Chair” of St. Peter. Liturgically, it recalls the day Peter took up his episcopal ministry in Antioch, where he served before coming to Rome. He was Pope from Jesus’ ascension (May 19, 30 AD), but he didn’t immediately go to Rome. The early Christians not only celebrated Peter’s heroic martyrdom as a feast but also celebrated the anniversary of the day on which he started to guide the first Christians in the place Jesus’ believers were first called Christians.
- To celebrate the feast of St. Peter’s Chair, however, is something more specific than fêting Peter’s ministry as a whole. The chair was the ancient symbol of teaching authority. Teachers would sit and all their students would stand, the exact opposite of what happens today. In the Gospel, the evangelists tell us on several occasions that Jesus “sat down and began to teach” the crowds. The chair became a symbol of teaching authority and in some ways that remains today, when we refer to the person who has the “chair of philosophy” or “chair of theology” or even the “chair” of a particular meeting. To celebrate the feast of the Chair of St. Peter is to rejoice in the teaching authority Christ has given him for the sake of his body the Church. Jesus gave Peter the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” to bind and loose on earth, and that even greater authority over the sacraments points to the authority he has to teach authoritatively in Jesus’ name. We retain the expression of the Pope’s teaching ex cathedra (literally “from the chair”) to highlight his most solemn teachings to us, applying Christ’s words and wisdom to the present age.
- The teaching authority of the Pope has been so important throughout Church history. We see even in the Acts of the Apostles how there were disputes about whether Gentile converts needed to follow the whole Mosaic law and how Peter intervened in the Council of Jerusalem. Much later there were huge issues with whether Christ was fully God and fully man, whether he was two persons or one person and two natures, whether he had the full complement of a human body, soul and spirit, whether he had one will or two wills, whether the Holy Spirit was divine, what the sacraments were and whether they were necessary for salvation, which sacred writings were truly inspired and binding, and so many other concerns. It was the work of the Popes and the early ecumenical councils to guide the Church through this time of confusion and division. The Pope was the central reference point. After Pope Leo the Great intervened with a famous “Tome” to guide the deliberations of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, many said, in a phrase that has since become famous, “Roma locuta est. Causa finita est.” “Rome [Peter] has spoken. The matter’s been put to rest.”
- We know how important that teaching authority is because serious questions about the faith regularly arise and we need a central reference point as much as any age. In the last sixty years, there have been various debates about the dignity of every human life, about the morality of marital sexuality, about whether Christ is the Savior of the human race, about the impossibility of the ordination of women to the priesthood, about the formula of baptism, about whether it’s possible to commit a mortal sin and how sins must be forgiven, and so many other themes. And the Church, through the successor of St. Peter, has sounded a clear trumpet. When we don’t have that trumpet, not only does the Church suffer division, but people’s salvation is at risk.
- Because the feast of the Chair of St. Peter happens so early in Lent this year, it would be good for us to look at Peter’s words and example as pertains to Lent. Lent is a sense in which we focus on repenting and believing and Peter is such a model of that conversion and faith. Though a self-professed sinful man before he met Christ, he continued to sin after having met him, even to the point of denying knowing him. But he believed in the Lord’s mercy, and after he turned back to the Lord, strengthened his brothers with that mercy. He also is a man of great faith, as we see in today’s Gospel, professing whom he believed Jesus was — not just the long awaited Messiah but much more, the Son of the eternal God — and he acted on that faith. Later, when Jesus taught in Capernaum about the Eucharist and many disciples abandoned Jesus, Peter was the one who stood up courageously once more and confessed that Jesus had the Words of Eternal LIfe and that they had come to believe that he is the Son of God. Peter is also someone who can help us with the three Lenten practices on which we’ve embarked.
- He is a man of prayer. The only way he could have learned what the Father revealed to him about Jesus was in prayer. Jesus would routinely take him, along with James and John, apart to pray, like at the top of the mountain where Jesus was transfigured, or in the Garden of Gethsemane, not to mention the other times they departed in a boat. The candor or his conversation with the Lord Jesus is a model of prayer.
- He similarly is a model of fasting. Like the other apostles, he was constantly without much food, at most a few loaves of bread and a few fish for a group of at least 13. They would have to pick heads of grain as they journeyed. They would need to be supported by women. Even though they were with the Bridegroom and therefore were exempt from fasting, their “feasting” would itself be quiet austere. This would have been felt by all of the apostles, but I think it would have been even greater for Peter, Andrew, James and John, who were so accustomed just to providing food for themselves and their families by catching it in the Sea of Galilee. He is a man who shows us how to control the appetite for food so that one can gain self-mastery and use it for Christ. Peter, more broadly, confessed that he and the other apostles had left everything to follow the Lord, a sign of his capacity to choose the Lord over his pleasures.
- Finally, he is a model of almsgiving. It’s noteworthy that after his conversion, when Christ asked him if he loved him and Peter replied three times that he did, that Jesus instructed him to feed and tend his sheep and lambs. Peter’s almsgiving was always, in a sense, with the Lord, just as at the time when Jesus was asked about the Temple Tax, he had Peter miraculously catch a fish that contained a coin that could pay not only Christ’s temple tax but Peter’s. His capacity for almsgiving was shown in a special way in his imitating Christ’s greatest alms on Calvary, as Peter himself was crucified for Christ and in communion with his redemptive love.
- On this feast, as we remember Peter’s confession of Christ and Christ’s of Peter, as we pray for our Holy Father and the exercise of his teaching authority, we remember that Peter not only confessed faith in Jesus’ giving us his body to eat and blood to drink but was present during the Last Supper when Jesus would totally change bread and wine into his body and blood and give himself to us to eat. Jesus commanded Peter and the other apostles to “do this in memory of me” and Peter did. Today through his intercession we ask for the grace to believe as he did, to receive as he did, and to confess Christ as Messiah and Son of God, truly present in the Eucharist, as he did.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 1 PT 5:1-4
Beloved:
I exhort the presbyters among you,
as a fellow presbyter and witness to the sufferings of Christ
and one who has a share in the glory to be revealed.
Tend the flock of God in your midst,
overseeing not by constraint but willingly,
as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly.
Do not lord it over those assigned to you,
but be examples to the flock.
And when the chief Shepherd is revealed,
you will receive the unfading crown of glory.
Responsorial Psalm PS 23:1-3A, 4, 5, 6
R. (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
Beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
With your rod and your staff
that give me courage.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for years to come.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Alleluia MT 16:18
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church;
the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 16:13-19
When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi
he asked his disciples,
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter said in reply,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
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.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download