This week’s Scriptural meditations on the Good Shepherd come a few days before Pope Benedict XVI comes with his shepherd’s staff to visit America.
Bishops and archbishops carry crosiers — shepherd staffs with a crooked top. But Popes have traditionally instead carried a staff with a crucifix at the top. Today’s readings explain a few reasons why.
God’s shepherding of his people is an Old Testament concept — as today’s Psalm, a favorite to many, reminds us: “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.” So, when Christ gave the Church authority to act in his place, the Church remained very much aware that Christ is the Good Shepherd.
In the first reading, Peter’s first act as “shepherd” of the apostles was to stand up and proclaim Christ crucified. In the second reading, from the First Letter of Peter, he describes Christ’s sufferings and then identifies him as the true Shepherd. “For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”
Finally, in the Gospel, Christ describes himself as not just the Shepherd whose sheep know him, but the Gate the keeps the sheep safe. When Pope Benedict XVI appears on television holding the crucifix this weekend, remember what that crucifix is meant to proclaim.
The new Peter is once again putting Christ crucified at the center of our faith — and of his ministry. Christ the Good Shepherd who dies for his sheep is once again placed before us to remind us that this is a voice we can follow to the place of safety.
And so, we thank God for giving us a new shepherd, Pope Benedict XVI who took over the Ministry of Peter - that is what every pope undertakes. The pope is the successor of Peter
Our thoughts therefore turn to Peter. Who is Peter? What is his ministry in the Church? What does it mean for a pope to succeed him in this ministry?
Bishops and archbishops carry crosiers — shepherd staffs with a crooked top. But Popes have traditionally instead carried a staff with a crucifix at the top. Today’s readings explain a few reasons why.
God’s shepherding of his people is an Old Testament concept — as today’s Psalm, a favorite to many, reminds us: “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.” So, when Christ gave the Church authority to act in his place, the Church remained very much aware that Christ is the Good Shepherd.
In the first reading, Peter’s first act as “shepherd” of the apostles was to stand up and proclaim Christ crucified. In the second reading, from the First Letter of Peter, he describes Christ’s sufferings and then identifies him as the true Shepherd. “For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”
Finally, in the Gospel, Christ describes himself as not just the Shepherd whose sheep know him, but the Gate the keeps the sheep safe. When Pope Benedict XVI appears on television holding the crucifix this weekend, remember what that crucifix is meant to proclaim.
The new Peter is once again putting Christ crucified at the center of our faith — and of his ministry. Christ the Good Shepherd who dies for his sheep is once again placed before us to remind us that this is a voice we can follow to the place of safety.
And so, we thank God for giving us a new shepherd, Pope Benedict XVI who took over the Ministry of Peter - that is what every pope undertakes. The pope is the successor of Peter
Our thoughts therefore turn to Peter. Who is Peter? What is his ministry in the Church? What does it mean for a pope to succeed him in this ministry?
In the Gospel proclaimed this morning, Jesus himself said that He is the gate for the sheep that whoever enters through him will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. Jesus entrusted the care of his flock to Peter, the perpetual and visible source and foundation of unity of the bishops and the multitude of the faithful. We can make a direct connection here of Peter being a good shepherd himself when he professed his love to Jesus and Jesus gave him the mission to feed and tend his sheep. Let us remember that this is the same Peter who earlier in the same Gospel had gone out fishing, caught nothing and then witnessed the miraculous catch of fish after following the words of a stranger, who in fact, was the Risen Lord. I am tempted to ask, “How could Jesus have chosen this helpless, unproductive fisherman to feed and tend his sheep?” Can you trust a fisherman who cannot handle fish to do well with sheep? Did Jesus know what he was doing? What brought Peter to this great responsibility?
Looking at the totality of the New Testament, we could say that Peter’s commission, apart from being a grace emanating from Jesus’ choice and calling, was due to his being a witness to the Risen Lord as our first reading puts it whose power conquered Peter’s own helplessness and whose word produced what Peter could not by his human skills. Peter, the shepherd of Jesus’ flock, was first and foremost, a witness to Christ in love. This task is very clear to Pope Benedict whose First Encyclical is “Deus est Caritas”. during his inauguration, he said: One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people entrusted to him, even as he loves Christ whom he serves. “Feed my sheep”, says Christ to Peter, and now, at this moment, he says it to me as well. Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God’s truth, of God’s word, the nourishment of his presence, which he gives us in the Blessed Sacrament. He continued by asking us all to pray for him, that he may learn to love the Lord more and more. To pray for him, that he may learn to love the flock more and more – in other words, all of us , the holy Church, each one of us and all of us together. To pray for him that he may not flee for fear of the wolves.
Then Jesus told him as a promise, “You are Peter (Petros), and on this rock ( petra), I will build my Church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.” Simon, the fisherman, the witness and confessor of the faith in Jesus, is now Peter, the rock. Likewise, every successor of Peter is the bedrock of the faith by witnessing to the truth of Jesus.
The next question is, “What type of rock is Peter?” We can get a hint from Jesus’ reaction to Peter’s confession. Jesus said, “Blest are you Simon, son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” In other words, the solidity of Peter’s confession is not due to “flesh and blood”, to his human qualities and capabilities. We have seen already how limited Peter’s human capabilities were, how helpless and unproductive this fisherman was in his field of expertise, fishing! He could not have produced, humanly speaking, such a lofty spiritual insight. Jesus attributed Peter’s faith to the revelation of the Father. It is the Father’s grace, it is God’s mercy, talked about in the first reading that makes Peter a witness. Yes, the true and real rock on which Peter should rely is the grace and mercy of God. Jesus’ trust makes Peter the rock of the Church’s faith.
Let us behold the mosaic of who Peter is. Peter - commissioned by Jesus to feed and tend his sheep by witnessing to the truth in love. Peter - the bedrock of faith, due only to God’s grace, and a stumbling block when he is self-reliant. Peter - the bearer of the keys of forgiveness and mercy. Such is Peter’s ministry. Such is the ministry of his successor Pope Benedict XVI. The figure of Peter is the symbol of the Church in the world. The Church, like Peter, is called to witness to Jesus, the Truth, the Way and the Life. The Church, like Peter, is salt and light to the world when it is open to God’s grace. The Church, like Peter, is the offer of forgiveness, mercy and unity to a world of division, violence and oppression.
I had the chance to be in a conference in Rome when Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict spoke about the Ministry of Peter. He presented a very extensive and powerful theological and pastoral perspectives on this topic. It must be disconcerting for him who has written and spoken on the ministry of Peter as a scholar, to be the actual successor of Peter. To write about it and to be it are two distinct realities. What Joseph Ratzinger had written then as a scholarly opinion has now become an existential cry, when he said at his first message as pope on April 20,2005, “I, the successor of Peter, repeat with trepidation the anxious words of the fisherman from Galilee, and I listen again with intimate emotion to the reassuring promise of the divine Master. If the weight of the responsibility that now lies on my poor shoulders is enormous, the divine power on which I can count is surely immeasurable.” It is not the theologian speaking; it is Peter. The brilliant mind behind many theological books, now declared plainly, without the niceties of theological discourse, at the inauguration of his pontificate on April 24, 2005, “My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history.” This is Peter, not relying on “flesh and blood”, but on the mercy of the Father. Just like Jesus in our Gospel speaking today to all of us that he is the gate for the sheep, Pope Benedict declared as a confidence of the heart, to the vast crowd at his inauguration, “the Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.”
No comments:
Post a Comment