This Sunday, Break Free From the Power of Hell Through the Authority of Peter

God created us to be social creatures, and so he always gives us a way to follow him by following someone like us — patriarchs, prophets, judges, and kings; and above all, his own Son, our eternal King, Jesus, and his earthly stewards, or vicars, the popes, beginning with Peter.

Here are takeaways for Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, drawn from Sunday Readings columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: What must the other apostles have thought when they heard what Jesus said to Peter?

“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,” Jesus says.

He renames Simon Peter, “the rock,” and clearly confers a high degree of authority on the fisherman — and the Catholic Church, famously, has taken Jesus at his word.

The early Church knew exactly what it meant to say that he was “Rock.” It was a comparison to the Foundation Stone of the great Temple, which is under the Dome of the Rock. In Jewish commentary from the time of Christ, this rock was even thought to be the place where the world was founded: Eden.

And now Peter is going to be the rock for a new world God was founding, his new Eden, the Kingdom. Jesus goes on to add a startling statement of power: “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.”

And it is clear that the apostles saw Peter as their leader. The other 11 apostles are mentioned 130 times in the Gospels, counted all together. Peter alone is mentioned 191 times — and Peter’s authority is made clear implicitly and explicitly. In the Book of Acts, we even see how people would line the streets just for Peter’s shadow to fall on them.

Second: The Early Church knew this also meant the papacy.

St. Cyprian of Carthage, who was born around the year 200, explained the authority of Peter and his successors:

“A primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?”

St. Ambrose, born in the year 333, had the same reverence for Peter and his successors. He said:

“Where Peter is, there is the Church. And where the Church, no death is there, but life eternal.”

In 1942 archeologists dug down beneath modern-day St. Peter’s basilica to the original church built there in 326 — and found St. Peter’s tomb under the high altar. That means the Church that stands for all of Christendom was founded on Peter’s very bones — this man is the Church’s Foundation Stone.

How is it possible that Peter has this kind of authority?

Third: Jesus gives a clue to what is happening when he calls Peter the “son of Jonah.”

Sunday’s Gospel reading comes shortly after Jesus proclaims, earlier in Matthew 16, that he will not give “an evil and unfaithful generation” any sign except the sign of Jonah.

Jonah is a weak prophet who, in a single day, converts the entirety of the wicked, pagan city of Nineveh simply by repeating one phrase. This is what Jesus’s sign of Jonah would be also. Jonah fled God to the ends of the world; Peter wanted to flee also, but with his first public sermon — which refers to “this corrupt generation,” as Jesus did — Peter converts 3,000 people. He goes on to lead a Church that conquers the world.

Like Jonah, Peter’s personal powers of persuasion could not possibly account for the results he got. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, this is why Jesus gives the keys not to the brilliant Paul or the mystic John, but to Peter — so that it will be clear that Jesus is the real power here.

Ironically, it is only when Peter admits that he is in no way the answer to the world’s problems — Christ is — that Jesus makes him “the rock.” Peter’s theological motto is, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” His charism is to be clueless apart from Christ. This subservience to God is the key to the ministry of Peter.

Yes, Jesus gives remarkable authority to Peter and his successors, the popes. But what Jesus says of himself remains true through it all: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Having a vicar on earth does not change that.

Fourth: In other words, the pope is a steward of Christ the King.

Literature has taught us what stewards are, as opposed to kings. When King Richard is away, Robin Hood has to fight against the king’s unlawful steward, Prince John. And before The Return of the King, the steward Denethor makes a mess of things in The Lord of the Rings.

In both those cases, the steward’s power is real, even when the person holding it is untrustworthy.

In this Sunday’s First Reading, from Isaiah, we learn that the Lord can raise and reject stewards at will. The Lord explains to Shebna, who is second in command to King Hezekiah, that a new steward will replace him.

“I will thrust you from your office and pull you down from your station,” says the Lord. “I will summon my servant Eliakim; … I will clothe him with your robe … and give over to him your authority. … I will place the key of the House of David on Eliakim’s shoulder; when he opens, no one shall shut, when he shuts, no one will open.”

These words show the flip side of the authority that Our Lord gives to human beings. As easily as Peter is given power, he can lose it — because the power isn’t his. And not only is his authority God’s, but Peter’s wisdom is God’s too. The Second Reading explains:

“How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!” St. Paul writes about God. “For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? Or who has given the Lord anything that he may be repaid? For from him and through him and for him are all things.”

What can Simon Peter add to the perfection of God? Nothing. What teaching can Peter add to the truth of Jesus? None. Is it ever Peter’s place to add to or subtract from the truth? Never.

Fifth: Jesus has already told us to whom the Kingdom belongs — and it’s not Peter.

By this point in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has talked a lot about the Kingdom and has said:

• The Kingdom belongs to “the poor in spirit” — not to the greedy.
• It belongs to “those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” — never to a coward seeking comfort and safety.
• Those who inherit the Kingdom will be those who “feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give drink to the thirsty” — those who came to serve, like Jesus, not those who expect to be served.

And when Jesus, in Matthew, speaks about who is great in the Kingdom, he lays out some categories:

• The great aren’t the religious types who cry, “Lord, Lord,” but those who do the will of his Father in heaven.
• The great aren’t the apostles who argue about who is the greatest, but rather those who humble themselves like a child.
• When James and John ask to be great, Jesus says they can — by sharing Christ’s suffering.

This is incredibly freeing.

Sixth: It shows that Christ means it when he says, “The gates of hell shall not prevail” against his Kingdom.

The forces of money, pleasure, power, and honor imprison us in the world. We traded the slave master Pharaoh for the slave master Satan, who traps us with sin, addiction, and death. But Christ says, “The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against” the Church Peter leads. Baptism breaks us free from Satan’s power, and confession snaps open sin’s shackles.

The prison of Herod couldn’t hold Peter, and the prison of the netherworld can’t hold us.

And where do we find our “in” to the Kingdom of freedom? At every Eucharist.

“At the Last Supper the Lord himself directed his disciples’ attention toward the fulfillment of the Passover in the kingdom of God,” says the Catechism (Nos. 1403–1405):

“The Church knows that the Lord comes even now in his Eucharist and that he is there in our midst. … Every time the mystery is celebrated ‘the work of our redemption is carried on,’ and we ‘break the one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live forever in Jesus Christ.’”

Those who receive Jesus Christ himself in Communion are leaving the powers of the netherworld and entering the quiet power of the Kingdom of heaven.

Image: wikimedia commons

By Tom Hoopes