Primacy of Peter Does Matter to Us (21.A)

I've mentioned before that I thought the pandemic was going to give me some time to read, at long last. Well, we all know what a crazy idea that was. I'm busier than ever.

But somehow I found the time to get into two books this week. One is the first volume of Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth, which is so rich that I will probably be quoting it in every second homily from now to Christmas. And by Christmas I hope I've finished the third volume of the Pope Emeritus's work, which is about Christmas.

(Note to reader: Of course I am ashamed that I never read it before now, despite several false starts!]

I won't be quoting from Jesus of Nazareth this week though, because the other amazing book I started really helped me prepare a homily on this Sunday's readings.

The book's called To Believe in Jesus. It's by a Carmelite nun called Ruth Burrows. For me, at least, it was just the right book at just the right time. For one thing, it really confirmed my decision to plough ahead with Pope Benedict's books. The author reminds us that although only the Holy Spirit can reveal Jesus to us, we have a duty to use our intellect to search for God.

(By the way, Ruth Burrows is a pen name. She is actually called Sister Rachel. She manages not even to have an entry on Wikipedia, no small accomplishment for someone who's written at least a dozen books over the years and is now in her nineties.)

Sister Rachel entered the convent at eighteen, so I figure she's been living a cloistered life for more than seventy years. But like most cloistered nuns, she knows what's going on in the world. So it was no surprise that she compared our religious thinking to a skyscraper.

We build this structure from our thoughts and beliefs, room by room, until it towers "majestically to the sky." Floor by floor it soars to heaven, built of the doctrines and dogmas that we Catholics believe.

It's an impressive high-rise that gives us a sense of security and even pride--we like to show it to others.

 But, Ruth Burrows writes, we ourselves are living on the ground floor. Most of those doctrines and dogmas "might just as well not exist for all it means to our daily life."

That's a pretty strong statement, but it's hard to argue with an elderly nun. I know, because I've tried once or twice!

Instead of arguing. let's see where this remarkable author goes with her statement: straight to us, to you and me. She points out that "everything God has revealed is for living, is for use."

Therefore, we have to think out for ourselves what the various formulations of faith really mean to us." We can't just be "content with rattling off the answer given us by others" but need to see how religious truths are relevant to our lives.

Today's Gospel presents us with one of those religious truths that we may find on one of the upper floors of our skyscraper--the primacy of Peter, the authority of his successor, the Pope.

It's easy to leave this Gospel upstairs and unconnected to our daily life, or even to our life, period. The Pope's in Rome thousands of miles away; he's far from important to my walk as a disciple.

Yet the Catechism says that the "pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the Church's very foundation and is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope" (CCC 881).

Can something belong to the foundation of the Church and live at the top of our building of beliefs, way up in the clouds?

Again, we can listen to Ruth Burrows: "everything God has revealed is for living... If we seriously want God then we have to think out what the various formulations of faith really mean to us."

So how do we do that? She has an answer ready: we must study the word of God ourselves, with the ability God has given us.

Certainly, you can look at the dogma of papal infallibility from Vatican I, or teaching about papal primacy from Vatican II, the Catechism, or St. John Paul II. But today we have before us the word of God.

Jesus is not setting up an efficient organizational structure in today's Gospel. He is revealing a plan for his Church that exists to help us grow closer to him. It must mean something for Christians today or it really makes no sense.

Nothing he taught, no truth the Church believes, has no use or purpose.

It's taken me a while to present this argument for the value and purpose of all dogmas and doctrines, so I haven't left myself a lot of time to unpack the truths Jesus reveals to us today. But I can do it quickly.

A key and a rock. With those images in our minds, we can begin to think about why what we believe about how the Pope leads the Church matters to each of us.

The key is a symbol of trust.  In the first reading, the king's new steward or minister receives a key and a mission. With the key, he can unlock the treasury in service of the king and people.

 A key in those days was not small.  And the holder did not share it with anyone. Which reminds me of the English abbot who invited us into a parlour in the monastery where we were guests. He pulled out a very large key from under the front of his religious habit. As he turned to a carved cupboard set in the wall, I expected to see a cabinet of relics or something of the sort.

Instead, the door swung open to reveal a liquor cabinet! You can be sure that that key didn't get passed around.

The keys to the kingdom given to Peter are, in one sense, his alone, and handed down to the Pope alone. But in another sense, as the Catechism says, the bishops together continue Peter's ministry under the primacy of the Pope.

What's that mean to us? At its simplest level, we know who has authority and who does not. When some trouble or other arises at church, people come straight to me and say "Father, have you got the keys to the kitchen, or the washroom, or the storeroom."

Now no-one's come to me yet and asked if I have the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  But I do... and so do you. Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it boldly: "Instead of the pastor being built on the rock of the congregation, it is the congregation, a part of the Church, that is built on the rock of Peter in which all priestly offices have a share."  (Light of the World, p. 121).

Which takes us to that other image, the rock. It's even more powerful a symbol than a key. In the Psalms God is called a rock. And speaking of the rock Moses struck to give water in the desert, St. Paul says "the rock was Christ."

Peter is called a rock because Christ is a rock. We don't put our faith in the Pope; we put it in Christ.

Let me conclude with another quotation from von Balthasar: "Faith in God and in Christ can only become rockhard faith in a rocky fortress through God and Christ himself. Such faith is a foundation upon which Christ, not man, builds his Church" (p. 120).

We've just skimmed the surface today, so let's continue reflecting at home on this question: How does what the Gospel teaches and the Church believes about the primacy of Peter and the Pope help me to be a more confident and faith-filled disciple of Christ?