The Church is God's Prophet today (Sunday homily)

In today’s Gospel the Apostles face a choice: 

Play it safe or put everything on the line. 

First the Lord asks an easy question: 

“What are folks saying about me?” 

And they all have something to say.

Then, Jesus puts them on the spot: 

“And who do you say that I am?” 

Now Simon steps out alone: 

“You are the Anointed One: the Son of the Living God.” 

Even early in life—when we’re kids in school— 

we face the choice of melting into the crowd, 

or standing up and standing out, for what is right. 

It’s not fair that others hang back, 

letting you step up alone; but that’s life. 

That gnawing in your stomach? That’s normal. 

That voice that tells you to speak up? 

That’s your conscience. 

And however hard stepping up is to do, 

Do you know what feels worse?

The appalling regret that comes from knowing 

what you should have done or said, 

but didn’t find the nerve to do. 

Simon commits himself. 

That’s when Jesus says: “You are Peter—you are Rock— 

And upon this Rock I will build my Church.” 

Jesus makes a promise here: 

The Rock will stand; the Church will stand; and she has. 

This scene happened in Caesarea Philippi.

There you can still see what Peter saw:

a massive wall of rock, 

and at its base pagan temples (now ruins)

dedicated to the emperor.

In that setting Jesus said, “upon this Rock”—

meaning Peter and his profession of faith. 

Thirty years later, in Rome, Peter was crucified under Nero.

His disciples buried him nearby and marked the grave 

with a red stone, and the words, Petros eni: “Peter is within.”

For centuries, no one had seen the tomb; some called it a legend.

Fast-forward to the 1940s; there are excavations below the altar.

A shovel strikes something hard. 

It’s a red stone, bearing a hand-written scrawl, in Greek: Petros eni!

Directly above, in the nave of the church, in letters four feet high, 

stand the words we heard today:

“Upon this Rock I will build my Church.” 

The Church is literally built on Peter—but not on Peter by himself;

but on Peter transformed by Christ. 

We believe Christ protects the Church, in a supernatural way,

from teaching error. This is what we call infallibility.

It does not mean the pope has all the answers,

or that every pope has lived a saintly life.

It means that when the pope gives definitive teaching

to the entire Church on faith and morals,

God prevents him from binding the Church to error. 

The first reading gives the rationale:

God’s people needed a leader who would be

“a peg in a sure spot,” a father to Jerusalem. 

We’re discouraged by human failure in the life of our Church.

The amazing thing is how often the Church has done what Peter did:

speak up, even when alone.

That has been our prophetic role, to defend human dignity

in the face of a rush to ill-considered “progress.” 

Pope St. Paul VI stood nearly alone when he reaffirmed

that marital love is meant to be both unifying and life-giving, 

and so, neither aspect should be excluded.

We continue that lonely task today

whenever we defend the dignity of the unborn and elderly,

or of any person society is tempted to discard. 

It’s hard to stand up against the crowd. 

How alone Peter might have felt, about to die,

standing in the center of pagan Rome, 

with everyone jeering, “what a fool!”

Yet where is Nero? Where is mighty Rome?

Gone; plundered; turned to dust.

And if we find it hard to accept the teachings of the Church, remember: 

everyone likes a prophet when he tells us we’re right;

And we can’t stand a prophet who tells us we’re wrong.

But isn’t that exactly what we need a prophet for?