"YOU ARE PETER ..."

Feast of Saints Peter & Paul. Matthew 16:13-19.

AIM: To encourage the hearers by showing the human weaknesses of Peter and Paul.

AYou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.@ What do these familiar words really mean? They were a play on words which cannot be duplicated in English. In Jesus= language, Aramaic, the words for Peter and Rock were the same. In calling his friend, Simon, APeter,@ Jesus was giving him a new name: ARock.@

In reality, Peter was anything but rocklike. When, on the night before he died, Jesus told Peter that within hours Peter would deny him three times, Peter protested: AEven though I have to die with you, I will never disown you.@ (Mt. 26:34f) We all know the sequel: Jesus was right, Peter wrong.

Why, then, did Jesus choose Peter, of all people, as the leader of his Church?  Was it because Peter loved Jesus most? No, there was another friend of Jesus who clearly loved the Master more; who, alone among Jesus= male disciples, returned to stand beneath the cross as Jesus died. If love and loyalty were the basis for the office of leader, it would have gone to the unnamed Adisciple whom Jesus loved,@ as he is called in the gospel according to John. 

Jesus gave the position of leadership to the friend whose love was imperfect; whose impetuosity and weakness made the name Jesus gave him C Rock C ironic: as ironic as calling a 350-pound heavyweight ASlim.@ Before he was fit to become the Church=s leader, however, Peter had experience his weakness. That is the significance of Peter=s threefold denial of the Lord the night before Jesus died.

As long as Peter thought he was strong; as long as he could boast that though all the others might desert Jesus, he would remain faithful C he was unfit for leadership. He had to become aware of his own weakness. He had to be convinced that without a power greater than his own he could do nothing. Then, and only then, could Jesus use him. Then Simon would deserve his new name, ARock;@ because he would trust not in his own strength or willpower, but only and always in God, Awhose power reaches perfection in weakness,@ as today=s other saint, Paul, would write in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (12:9).

What was rocklike, then, in Peter was not strength of character or willpower, but faith C Peter=s trust in the One whose strength overcomes our human weakness. Jesus bestowed the office of leader on Peter in response to Peter=s declaration of faith. That is the rock on which the Lord builds his church: trust in Jesus as God=s anointed servant: the Messiah, and God=s Son. As long as this trusting faith endures, Jesus says, even death itself will have no power over his church.

We Catholics believe that Peter=s office of chief pastor continues in Christ=s Church. In time, Peter=s successors came to be called APope.@ Today the Pope has a position as different from Peter=s as today=s worldwide Catholic Church differs from the little band of friends who followed Jesus along the dusty roads of first-century Palestine.

In one respect, however, Peter=s successor today is no different from the warm-hearted but impetuous and often weak man whom Jesus first chose to lead his Church, and to whom he gave the name, ARock.@  Every one of Peter=s successors, our present Holy Father included, is an ordinary sinner like each of us, who must constantly seek God=s forgiveness for his shortcomings and failures in the sacrament of penance. Like Peter, he is strong only as long as he trusts not in himself, but only in the power that comes from God alone, through his Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

With Peter the Church honors today the Apostle Paul. His call was as surprising, in its way, as the Lord=s choice of Peter to be the Church=s leader.  Which one of us could have imagined that the Church=s arch-persecutor, Saul, would become its first and greatest missionary, Paul? Ananias, the man sent to baptize Saul after his blinding vision of the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, tried to refuse. ALord, I have heard from many sources about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem.@  AYou must go!@ the Lord answered.  AThis man is the instrument I have chosen to bring my name to the Gentiles ... and to the people of Israel. I myself shall show him how much he will have to suffer for my name.@ (Acts 9:13-16)

AHow much he must suffer@: there is the key. A special call always involves suffering. Paul=s sufferings were compounded by defects of character as pronounced as Peter=s, though different. If Peter was impulsive, impetuous, and often weak, Paul was hypersensitive, touchy, subject to wide swings of mood: at times elated, at others tempted to self-pity. No one who knew Paul would ever have accused him of Ahaving it all together@ C to use modern jargon.

Is there anything like that in your life? When you look within, do you see any of Paul=s touchiness, or Peter=s impetuosity and weakness? Take heart! You have a friend in heaven C two friends, in fact: Peter and Paul. The same Lord who gave the vacillating Simon the name of ARock@; who summoned the church=s arch-enemy, Saul, to be the great missionary, Paul, is calling you. In baptism he made you, for all time, his dearly loved daughter, his beloved son. He called you to be not only his disciple, but an apostle: his messenger to others. You say you=re not fit for that? You=re right. Neither am I! God does not always call those who are fit, by ordinary human standards. But he always fits those whom he calls.  

God has a plan for your life, as surprising and wonderful as his plans for Peter and Paul. Knowing this, and aware of how God was accomplishing his plan in Paul=s own life, Paul could write: AI am sure of this much: that he who has begun the good work in you will carry it through to completion, right up to the day of Christ Jesus@ (Phil. 1:6).

Those words are part of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And the best news of all is simply this. The only thing that can frustrate the accomplishment of God's plan C for you, for me, for any one of us C is our own deliberate and final No.