Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Apostle

Lectionary: 535

 Simon Peter said in reply, 

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so 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.
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.” 

 

On this feast of the Chair of Saint Peter I still like the essay I wrote last year concerning relics. I pointed to the fascination of relics. A year later, however, I am not convinced a relic should outrank a Lenten weekday, but, as they say in Minnesota, “whatever.” 

Catholics must pause occasionally to ponder the price and privilege of being Catholic, and the gift of the papacy.

Saint John Henry Newman pondered deeply the authority of the Catholic Church and its papacy as he journeyed from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Despite the claims of his English coreligionists, he recognized they were more Protestant than Catholic, and he had serious issues with the whole concept of Protestantism. Can one build a religion around protesting? Can they define themselves by what they’re not, by what they don’t believe, and how they don’t pray?

Personally, I have tried to stop using the expression non-Catholic; it seems derogatory and disrespectful. I would prefer to know my neighbor as Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Evangelical, or whatever denomination they prefer. But the military and the VA still regards all non-Catholics except Jews and Muslims as non-Catholics. Christian chaplains are either Catholic or Protestant.

And I have noticed Protestant laity may switch denominations simply by entering the building while converts to Catholicism must go through RCIA before receiving Baptism, Eucharist, or Confirmation. We take our identity and our beliefs seriously. (Protestant ministers, however, often undergo a rigorous scrutiny before they are accepted into another group; and might not be accepted.)

When Saint John Paul II invited religious leaders from the world to join him in prayer for peace, he recognized that the assembled could not exactly pray together. Jews, Muslims, and Christians supposedly worship the same God of Abraham, but many other religions address a different deity, if any. Jews and Muslims do not pray to the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. And Protestants, for the most part, do not pray in union with the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints and angels.

Given the violence each might do to their own identity if they prayed to an alien god, they agreed that every group should pray in their own traditional way while the others listened in respectful silence. This, the Saint hoped, would demonstrate a universal desire for peace among all religions while respecting their differences. (By the way, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, was pointedly absent from the assembly.)

The feast of the Chair of Saint Peter reminds Catholics of our distinctiveness, and that it does make a difference which church you attend. When people tell me. “It doesn’t matter which church you attend;” I add,” “… if you attend no church.”

Catholics take seriously the authority of the pope, the bishops, and priests. The VA honors our Catholic belief in its willingness to provide priest chaplains because Catholics cannot exercise their First Amendment right to worship without a priest. We must have our sacraments of Eucharist, Reconciliation, and Anointing of the Sick. Catholic military personnel or VA patients deprived of the ministry of a priest are denied their constitutional right to worship.

During this pandemic many Catholics might have forgotten that. They might have learned to prefer the virtual presence of a priest and congregation over the real presence of breathing, perspiring crowds of human beings. They might suppose they can absent themselves from the assembly despite the express warning of the Bible in Hebrews 10:25. 

Our devotion to the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist should remind us how seriously we take our Catholic faith and identity. When we emerge from pandemic isolation and return to the world of social nearness let us embrace the pope, the bishops, the priests, deacons, and one another with bear hugs of happiness.