You are Peter!
Gospel Commentary for solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul

By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 27, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Today’s Gospel is the Gospel in which the keys are given to Peter. The Catholic tradition has always taken this Gospel as the basis for the Pope’s authority over the entire Church.

Someone might object that there is nothing here about the papal office. Catholic theology responds in the following way. If Peter is called the Church’s “foundation” or “rock,” then the Church can only continue to exist if its foundation continues to exist.

It is unthinkable that such solemn prerogatives -- “To you I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven” -- refer only to the first 20 or 30 years of the Church’s life, and that they would cease with the apostle’s death. Peter’s role thus continues in his successors.

Throughout the first millennium, all the Churches universally recognized this office of Peter, even if somewhat differently in East and West.

The problems and divisions crept up in the second millennium, which has just concluded.

Today we Catholics admit that these problems and divisions are not entirely the fault of the others, the so-called schismatics, first the Eastern Churches and then the Protestants.

The primacy instituted by Christ, as all things human, has sometimes been exercised well and at other times not so well. Gradually political and worldly power mixed with the spiritual power and with this came abuses.

Pope John Paul II, in his letter on ecumenism, “Ut unum sint,” suggested the possibility of reconsidering the concrete forms in which the Pope’s primacy is exercised in such a way as to make the concord of all the Churches around the Pope possible again. As Catholics, we must hope that this road of conversion to reconciliation be followed with ever greater courage and humility, especially implementing incrementally the collegiality called for by the Second Vatican Council.

What we cannot desire is that the ministry itself of Peter, as sign and source of the Church’s unity, will disappear. This would deprive us of one of the most precious gifts that Christ has given to the Church besides going against Christ’s own will.

To think that the Church only needs the Bible and the Holy Spirit to interpret it in order for the Church to live and spread the Gospel, is like saying that it would have been sufficient for the founders of the United States to write the American Constitution and show the spirit in which it must be interpreted without providing any government for the country. Would the United States still exist?

One thing that we can all immediately do to smooth the road toward reconciliation between the Churches is to begin reconciling ourselves with our Church.

“You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church”: Jesus says my “Church,” in the singular, not my “churches.” He had thought of and wanted only one Church, not a multiplicity of independent churches, or worse, churches fighting among themselves.

The word “my,” as in “my Church,” is possessive. Jesus recognizes the Church as “his”; he says “my Church” as a man would say “my bride” or “my body.” He identifies himself with it, he is not ashamed of it.

On Jesus’ lips the word “Church” does not have any of those subtle negative meanings that we have added to it.

There is in that expression of Christ a powerful call to all believers to reconcile themselves with the Church. To deny the Church is like denying your own mother. “You cannot have God for father,” St. Cyprian said, “if you do not have the Church for your mother.”

It would be a beautiful fruit of the feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul if we too were to learn to say of the Catholic Church to which we belong that it is "my Church!"

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]

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Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher. The readings for this Sunday are Acts 12:1-11; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18; Matthew 16:13-19.

http://www.h2onews.org/_page_videoview.php...32#&lang=en

Since this Sunday is June 29th, the calendar feast for today, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, takes precedence over what would have been the Mass for the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time.

This weekend we inaugurate the Year of St. Paul. We are doing it to commemorate the 2000th birthday of the great apostle. It is a birthday worth celebrating because few people have had more impact on our world than Paul of Tarsus. When he announced this Year of St. Paul, Pope Benedict noted that "historians have placed (the birth of St. Paul) between the years 7 and 10 A.D."
We have an opportunity here to take a closer look at the two most dynamic saints of the primitive Church. Their feast is celebrated together because both Peter and Paul travelled to spread Christianity to Rome where they were both martyred. They are the principal patrons of the Church of Rome.

Peter, was the disciple who denied that he even knew Jesus when the servant girl questioned him in the high priest’s courtyard; but the prayers of Jesus (Luke 22:31) turn him around and strengthen him to lead the rest of the disciples after Easter and Pentecost. And Paul was that zealous persecutor of the Christian movement (“breathing murderous threats,” Acts 9:1) who needed to be confronted by the risen Jesus in person before he saw the light, and was changed from premier persecutor to prime promoter of the Christian mission.
Both of these men also experienced the Lord’s rescue in dramatic physical ways. Today’s reading from Acts shows Peter enjoying a miraculous release from prison; and the rescues that Paul refers to in the letter to Timothy he itemizes in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27, where he lists multiple imprisonments, beatings, a stoning, three shipwrecks, and “a night and a day on the deep.”
The lives of Peter and Paul demonstrate that the life of a disciple is a life that knows God as rescuer, finding oneself on the receiving end of divine love. This shows up even in today’s famous “thou art Peter” Gospel reading.
When Jesus asks the Twelve, “But who do you say that I am?” the impetuous Simon bar Jonah stumbles remarkably into the right answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). Jesus congratulates him that he got that right not because of any insight of his own but because Jesus’ heavenly Father revealed it to him. Whereupon Jesus dubs Simon with the nickname Kepha (or “Rock,” Petros in Greek), and goes on to say, “And on this kepha (petra in Greek) I will build my church.” So Simon will be the material foundation of the new community (pictured metaphorically as a temple); but the builder is clearly Jesus. How much Simon will still need “outside help” to carry out his role as Rock becomes clear a moment later, when he objects to Jesus’ prediction of his coming suffering and death in Jerusalem, and Jesus calls him “Satan” and “stumbling stone” (the meaning of skandalon, translated “obstacle” in verse 23 ). Without God’s help the foundation stone can become a stone of stumbling, a cautionary note for all of us who are given authoritative roles in the church—i.e. everyone from the pope, through bishops, priests, and deacons, to teachers, spouses, parents and friends.
As always, when we celebrate heroes of the faith like Peter and Paul, we celebrate what the grace of God can do with mere human flesh.