21st Sunday of the Year
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
On this Sunday we will hear the famous “Keys to the Kingdom” passage where Jesus confers upon Peter a share in His supreme authority over the Church of God. This sublime authority is conferred upon one man to assure the unity and indefectibility of the Church. Only by assuring the indefectible unity of the Church can its overall indefectibility be guaranteed. But what does this ecclesial indefectibility entail? I have found no better or clearer definition than that offered by the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia:
“By this term is signified, not merely that the Church will persist to the end of time, but further, that it will be preserved unimpaired in its essential characteristics. The Church can never undergo any constitutional change, which will make it, as a social organism, something different from what it was originally. It can never become corrupt in faith or in morals; nor can it ever lose the Apostolic hierarchy, or the Sacraments through which Christ communicates grace to men.”
The essential characteristics of course include the four marks of unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. All of these are vital properties of the organism which is the Mystical Body of Christ. And the role of Peter is tied most importantly to the first, the essential unity which guarantees the life and permanence of the Church. Peter’s task is to serve and preserve that essential unity by the faithful exercise of his office, and we can see this truth again in the passage of Luke following the Last Supper.
In Luke 22:31, Jesus tells Peter “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat…” In other words, Satan will always be trying to destroy the unity of the Church by dividing, sifting, the Apostles and their successors. By dividing the chief shepherds, Satan will rupture the unity of the Church as a whole. But Jesus then adds, “But I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.” The faith of some of the apostles down the line may fail, but Peter’s faith, like that of his successors, will never fail because Christ has prayed for Peter and his successors, and His grace, the Holy Spirit, will never fail,
Now there is also a second subject of this indefectible faith and supreme authority, and that subject is the whole College of Bishops with Peter as its head. However, this supreme authority, as in the case of Peter also, can only be exercised indefectibly, when the full college or Peter alone deliberately invokes that supreme authority to define a dogma of faith or morals as a matter of binding faith. Clearly, we cannot be one body, a unified Church unless we have a unified faith and unified way of life, which is where moral doctrine comes into play.
Now, there are three basic bonds of unity in the Church: unified belief in doctrinal and moral truth, unified worship in the same sacraments, and unified acceptance of the governing authority established in the Pope and College of Bishops. This 3-fold unity of faith, worship and governance was established by Christ himself, and there can be no true catholic and apostolic unity that does not embrace all three of these bonds of unity.
Read the Fathers and Doctors of the Church going back to the beginnings and you will see that it is unthinkable to these great, learned saints that there could be any true and full unity that was not grounded on a common faith – including a common set of moral truths governing Christian behavior – a common worship rooted in the same sacraments, and a common authority whose rock is the Office of Peter.
Today’s Gospel recalls this gift of this unity to the Church and the role of Peter and his successors in maintaining that unity willed by Christ. First, we hear Jesus ask for and receive Peter’s confession of faith in his Person and mission. Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, responds with a true confession of faith, that Jesus is the Messiah, (His mission) and that Jesus is the Son of the living God (His personal identity). Then, based upon this confession of faith, Jesus in turn confers upon Peter the role of being the rock of unity upon which Jesus will establish his Church, and he changes his very name to rock, Peter, from that point forward. Finally, to enable Peter to fulfill this role, Jesus confers upon Peter a share in his own supreme authority in Heaven and on earth. In other words, whatever Peter does in fulfillment of his specific role as Peter, he does it with the authority of Jesus Christ. Whenever Peter acts with his supreme authority to preserve the unity of faith, worship or governance, then Peter’s acts are in reality Christ’s own acts. It’s not as if Christ simply confirms what Peter does in His name; Christ actually acts through Peter.
Given this kind of authority, one very clearly limited to his exact role as Peter, it is obviously important to know just what this Petrine role is and, therefore, to what kind of acts this kind of supreme authority applies in this world. For instance, it is clear that this role of Peter is not a political role as such, and thus even while future popes will have some political authority in this world, the grant of supreme authority that Christ made that day at Caesarea Philippi definitely does not apply to any strictly political actions of those popes. That is, these actions do not bind or loose in heaven what they bind or loose on earth.
Likewise, future popes may also dabble in science or literature, or art, but here again their judgments or decisions related to these areas of human knowledge do not bear the supreme authority of Christ. The popes are not infallible nor are they exercising their supreme authority in making literary judgments, in their scientific knowledge, in their political decisions etc.
Finally, when the Pope makes specific Church disciplinary actions, such as suspending a cleric or making certain provisions of canon law, those decisions are not exercises of his supreme authority as in his solemn definitions of doctrine. As Cardinal Newman once wrote, it the Pope ordered Catholic politicians of a country to vote in favor of universal health care law that would not be an exercise of his supreme authority. Such declarations could only be absolutely binding in conscience when they touched a concrete moral matter already defined with the supreme authority of the Church, such as not voting in favor of abortion, euthanasia, total war, etc.
So, what then is the specific, narrowly defined role that Peter has in the Church until the end of time, an authority which even the gates of death will never overcome since this power and authority will be handed on to his successors in that role or office of Pope. The pope’s specific role is to be the indefectible foundation of the unity of Christ’s Church. To be sure, Christ himself is the absolute foundation of His Church, but he shares a part of this role with Peter for the good of the Church.
We can safely assert that Peter’s role and authority is clearly connected with his marvelous confession of faith. This fact becomes clear, as stated above, on the night before Christ died, when He declares that because of His own prayer, Peter’s faith will never fail, and that Peter must in turn strengthen the faith of the His brothers, the other apostles, and through them the faith of the whole Church. Thus the faith of Peter becomes the bedrock or guarantee of the faith of the whole Church, first of His own brother bishops, and then through them of the whole body of the faithful. So nothing is more important for his role of safeguarding the unity of the Church than protecting the faith and morals of the Church
To enable Peter to fulfill this specific role of being the guarantee and support of the faith of the whole Church on earth, Jesus grants to His office this unique share in His own authority, and a special gift of the Spirit, so that whatever Peter “binds” in relation to the Church’s faith and life is at once Christ’s act of binding. In other words, what Peter solemnly declares to be part of the faith of the Church, in the clear exercise of his supreme authority, is absolutely guaranteed to be true because here Christ is definitely speaking through Peter. Likewise, what Peter judges not to be part of the faith of the Church or her moral life, here too it is Christ definitely speaking through Peter.
By this action of Christ operating through Peter, the unity of the Church is guaranteed in this world until the end of time. Perhaps in a democracy like ours this grant of such an authority to one man may seem to be a dangerous grant of power to be granted to any single individual. And we Catholics can agree that it is way too much power for one man to exercise by himself. But we also know that this is precisely why it is his union with Christ alone, and with the whole Church, that safely enables him to do so. That is why we pray for our Holy Father at every Mass in a special way and why popes beg all of us to accompany him and support him by our prayers, to ask that God may lighten his burden and guide his steps.
In Christ’s Kingdom, power and authority are always to be understood as a great burden borne only for the sake of the others, not something to be sought after as in the political arena of this world. No one who really understands the burden and accountability of the gift of authority made to the pope or the bishop to be faithful to Christ and to his duties would ever desire such an office for its power or prestige. St. John Chrysostom was almost terrified by the kind of accountability connected with this office and resisted being made a bishop for years.
Still, what a great gift this grant of supreme authority is for the rest of us. Because Christ has given to His Church on earth a visible representative of his supreme authority, we can be absolutely certain that the faith of the Church will never be lost, and thus that we all have a sure guide for our own personal faith. This confidence is especially critical in troubled times like our own when there are so many voices speaking different and conflicting interpretations of our faith. We Catholics cling to the voice of Peter through the ages, the great doctrinal heritage of the papal Magisterium and the universal Magisterium of pope and bishops united. What was taught and believed as truth in the first century cannot be different from what is authentic doctrine in every Century, more developed certainly over time, but always the same truths. What a gift of love this is for us poor sinners in times of trouble.
We thank God always that Our Lord Jesus Christ firmly established the Church and her saving unity on the rock of Peter’s faith on that day outside a small village in northern Israel named after an earthly monarch, Caesarea Philippi. Those great gifts would one day reach out to the whole world and solidly establish a true communion of faith and life among the world’s peoples that no earthly kingdom or secular society could ever hope to establish. Praise be Jesus Christ, now and forever, Amen.
