You are the Christ

The Chair of Peter: 1 Peter 5.1-4 and Matthew 16.13-19
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Church of the Incarnation, Univ of Dallas

[NB. Confession time: I don't like this homily...]

Preachers like to point out that today is the only day on the Church calendar when we celebrate a piece of furniture. Of course, we aren’t celebrating a piece of furniture, we are honoring the shepherding office given to Peter by Christ and held today by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Even so, some would claim that the office of Peter—as it is currently understood by the Church—is a kind of furniture: a decorative chair, too pretty to actually use; a chair sealed in the plastic of tradition, away from the grubbiness of life; a chair moved out of the museum of the grandma’s sitting room only when important guests show up, but otherwise kept hidden away; a chair, in other words, too delicate to sit on, too fragile to clean up, and in much need of a good repair job. Let’s see what the connection is between Peter's confession and the teaching office of Peter.

In a scene that we have come to recognize as a “teaching moment,” Jesus sits with his students and asks a thunderclapping question, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples give a variety of answers, covering all the bases: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other prophet sent by God. You can almost see Jesus nodding, slightly amused by the answer but very understanding. Notice that the first formulation of this question asks who the Son of Man is. Once the disciples have shouted out their answers, Jesus changes the question, “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus answers his own question by changing the terms of the question the second time around. He is the Son of Man! Peter, obviously the eager-beaver leader of the student group pipes up immediately and says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Notice something else here. All of the disciples are implicated in the initial, incorrect answers. Only Peter answers the second question. Alone, he answers correctly. And like the good professor he is, Jesus praises Peter by saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah…”

What does this extraordinary exchange tell us about the commission Jesus gives Peter when he, Jesus, calls Peter the Rock and gives him the keys to the kingdom? The most basic revelation here is the direct link between the truth of who Jesus is for us and the teaching office of Peter. It falls to our Holy Father to constantly put before the Church the reality of the God-Man, the truth of the Incarnation; it falls to our Holy Father to call us back, to always call us back to the essential confession of every Christian (Catholic or not!) that the man, Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, is the promised Messiah of the prophets, that he is the Anointed One of the Father, that he is the Lamb, who upon the Cross, makes it possible for us all to participate in the divine life.

The Chair of Peter will be a piece of furniture when we look back from the Throne of God; but for us now, looking forward to Throne, the Chair of Peter is a compass, a roadmap, an infallible guide. Notice that we do not celebrate the Popes as a category. We celebrate this or that pope as a saint. We celebrate the office of the papacy. But we do not lift up and honor The Popes as men incapable of error or sin, as men separated from their ministry as Peter’s successors. The reason for this is simple: no man is above sin. We know that this or that pope made it to the Throne of God as a Saint. And the Chair of Peter itself sits in honor near the Throne. But as we all know, our history is spoiled with the avarice, lusts, pride, and arrogance of men who have sat in that Chair. This is precisely why Peter’s confession—“You are the Christ!—must remain on our lips as we pray, as we work, as we play, as we live and die.

Today’s feast of the Chair of Peter is not a celebration of Joseph Ratzinger or Karol Wojtyła or Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli or even Peter himself! Today we celebrate that teaching office of the Holy Spirit that shouts from first century Judea all the way to twenty-first century Irving, TX: “Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ!"