By David Kerr
Vatican City, (EWTN News/CNA): Pope Benedict
XVI reflected that St. Peter and St. Paul are prime examples of
the brotherhood that all Christians should live in Jesus Christ.
“Peter and Paul, much as they differ from one
another in human terms and notwithstanding the conflicts that
arose in their relationship, illustrate a new way of being
brothers, lived according to the Gospel, an authentic way made
possible by the grace of Christ’s Gospel working within them,”
he said.
The Pope made
his observations June 29 during his homily marking the Feast of
Saints Peter and Paul at the Vatican.
Among the vast congregation
in St. Peter’s Basilica were 43 new metropolitan archbishops
upon whom he had just conferred the pallium. The woven strip of
white lamb’s wool symbolizes the authority given to them by the
Roman Pontiff.
Among
those being conferred with the pallium were Archbishop Charles
J. Chaput of Philadelphia, Archbishop William E. Lori of
Baltimore, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver and the
Byzantine Archbishop William C. Skurla of Pittsburgh.
Pope Benedict used his homily to explore the life
and spiritual legacy of Saints Peter and Paul who were both
martyred in 1st century Rome thus making them, said the Pope, “a
kind of counterbalance to the mythical Romulus and Remus, the
two brothers held to be the founders of Rome.”
He noted how in St. Matthew’s Gospel, Saint
Peter’s proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah which did not come
“through flesh and blood” is quickly followed by the rebuke to
“Get behind me, Satan!” as Christ foretells of his impending
passion.
Thus we
clearly see, said Pope Benedict, a “tension that exists between
the gift that comes from the Lord and human capacities” that in
some sense anticipates the drama of the history of the papacy
itself.
“On the one hand, because of
the light and the strength that come from on high, the Papacy
constitutes the foundation of the Church during its pilgrimage
through history,” he said, “on the other hand, across the
centuries, human weakness is also evident, which can only be
transformed through openness to God’s action.”
Pope Benedict then looked at the other promises
given by Christ to Saint Peter including the assurance that the
“gates of the underworld” will not prevail against the Church.
This guarantee, said the Pope, is foreshadowed by
a similar pledge given by God to the Old Testament prophet
Jeremiah. However, while the promise to Jeremiah only pertained
to him as a person, the promise to Peter concerns “the future of
the Church, the new community founded by Jesus Christ, which
extends to all of history, far beyond the personal existence of
Peter himself.”
Meanwhile the “symbol of the
keys” is also prefigured in the Old Testament in the granting of
the keys to the House of David to the steward Eliakim.
The Pope said the New
Testament parallel reveals that “the authority of loosing and
binding consists in the power to remit sins” which “defuses the
powers of chaos and evil” and “is at the heart of the Church’s
ministry.”
“The Church
is not a community of the perfect, but a community of sinners,
obliged to recognize their need for God’s love, their need to be
purified through the Cross of Jesus Christ,” he concluded.
