Homily for the 12th Sunday after Trinity (21st Sunday of Ordinary Time)

“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom 11:33)

St. Paul has been speaking, in Romans, for the previous few chapters, of the mystery of election, and his hope for the ultimate salvation of ethnic Israel despite the majority’s apparent rejection of the new covenant in Christ. Perhaps we might just pause here to say that, in the face of, on the one hand, a resurgence in what I can only call weird and sub-Christian antisemitism among Catholics and others claiming the mantle of tradition, and, on the other hand, the somewhat naïve Zionism that has long reigned in conservative American evangelicalism, where modern political Israel just is Biblical Israel, full stop, St. Paul, the great Jewish apologist for the Gentiles, offers us something rather different: the recognition that God’s promises and providence do not require us to understand them for them to be real and true. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” (11:34)

But I do not intend to dwell on the Letter to the Romans today except as an introduction to another mystery of providence contained in the story of St. Peter’s confession in Matthew 16. As I think I pointed out last time we had this lectionary combination three years ago, the pairing of Matthew 16 with Isaiah 22 makes clear why the early Church, and everyone since, has to reckon with the Lord’s promises to Peter. The mainline Protestant churches which largely follow the Catholic lectionary cycle very intentionally obscure this connection from view, making it at least slightly easier to avoid the obvious scriptural implication, which was and is obvious to any serious reader of the Hebrew scriptures, that the Lord is giving Peter a very direct role parallel to the royal steward of the house of David.

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Mt 16:18-19)

Here is what the Trappist writer Fr. Simeon says about this passage: “All objections to the Petrine mandate, made on the basis of Peter’s present and future ineptitude, can only enhance our sense of wonderment at the paradox we thus discover at the heart of the divine mercy and design. How could such a person as Peter, or any person for that matter, ever be considered remotely ‘infallible’ in his or her natural state? Precisely! The deepest truth of the matter, properly speaking, is always unbelievable… The declaration of such strict parallelism and equivalency of spiritual events on earth and in heaven, on the initiative and decision of a human being, would be utterly preposterous if it were not the Son of God speaking the words and guaranteeing the results.”^[1]

Remember St. Paul in Romans: “how unsearchable.. his judgments … how inscrutable his ways.”

If we are prone to question the suitability of Peter here, or his successors, we can only remind ourselves of every other instance of divine election, and every other instance of human cooperation with the divine will. Why does God allow Adam to name the animals? Why does he give him free will at all knowing that he might squander it? The mystery of providence is also the mystery of human nature and human freedom: the fact that God keeps showing us, over and over again, that he created us for fellowship with him, and that its restoration will only happen with our cooperation.

Again our commentator: “We must conclude that it is the purely rationalistic thinking of the Enlightenment and the subsequent centuries that calls into question, not so much the Petrine mandate as such, but … the very ability of God to act as the words of this gospel passage describe him as acting. What is most profoundly at stake in this question of Christ’s commission to Peter is not so much the ecclesial uniqueness and importance of Peter as the sovereign freedom and power of God to act in Jesus as he sees fit, by bestowing on human beings a participation in God’s own knowledge of truth and exercise of authority, for the common good of all and the salvation of the world.”

Perhaps we should put it rather pointedly like this: the alternative to papal authority is not no authority, but a private individual authority, which is no less radical a claim in terms of the divine economy. Either way, God has entrusted his work to human beings. None of these things are safe or without risk. But the Catholic position has always been that in Peter and his successors we have, not the tyrannical dictatorship imagined by modern skeptics, nor the tyranny of self-enclosed conscience, but the ultimate common standard and public trust. The gospel is for everyone, not just those who decide that they are clever enough to carry its entire weight and interpretation on their own shoulders. It is not that the popes are perfect or even always good, but that Christ has given to them a role in guarding his Church, just as he gave Israel a role in revealing God’s plan for the nations, just as he does also still and unavoidably give each of us the role of applying the truths of divine and natural law to our own lives.

Notice how the gospel specifies that the confession of St. Peter happens at Caesarea Philippi. That is an interesting location, basically the source of the Jordan river. But the point is that it happens at a particular moment and a particular place. The good news of God’s salvation in Christ is not an abstract principle but a movement in history and time, a movement that continues to the present in this time and this place, to you and me. And the Lord still asks us the same question: Who do you say that I am? May the Holy Spirit always guide us to respond with Peter and hold fast to the truth.

^[1] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Matthew