Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?”  He waits to hear the various opinions, and then he asks a direct and personal question: “But who do you say that I am?”  It’s not a theoretical question any more for the disciples: they can’t just report the beliefs of others: they, themselves have to commit.  We all have these moment: when it’s no longer enough to speak of Jesus by repeating what others have said about him.  The moments when we must say what we actually believe.  When we must bear witness to a truth in our lives, bear witness to a real relationship that we have with a real person.  At that moment we must commit ourselves to that relationship with Christ and choose to carry that commitment through, with all of its consequences.  And so, he asks all of us as well: Who do YOU say that I am?  Our answer is deeply personal, because Christ is real, he’s really a person, and we really have a relationship with him.  And so our answer is personal.  But that doesn’t mean that we’re just making something up.  Because he is real.  And Peter is able to proclaim his incredible insight of Christ’s identity because of his Faith and because of a special gift of the Holy Spirit: not because any human wisdom led him there, and not by accident.  “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.” 

If we want to know who Christ is for us, we have to know who Christ is, we have to know Christ.  The Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us in many ways: in Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the Eucharist, and in the teachings of the Church.  This beautiful scene with Peter shows us what an incredible gift we have in Our Holy Mother, the Church, which is built upon the Faith of St Peter.  Peter is pretty weak guy on his own: he denied Christ three times after all, when Christ needed him most.  He’s frequently jealous, ambitious, angry.  But the Lord chooses him.  The Lord commissions him.  The Lord strengthens his Faith, and gives him a special role in the Church to strengthen and confirm the Faith of all Christians.  Christ makes Peter the Rock: it’s what the word Peter actually means.  He will be the Rock, the firm foundation on which Christ will build his Church, with a stability that no power will be able to overthrow. 

This passage of Scripture is so important to us as Catholics, because it shows how our Church is connected to Christ: through Peter.  We know from Scripture that Peter exercised leadership among the apostles in the Early Church.  We also know that Peter went to Rome, the capital of the world, as that great city’s first Bishop.  He was martyred there along with the other prince of the Apostles, St. Paul.  And so the city of Rome would be defined forever by the faith of Peter and Paul, faith which kept them firm to the end in their witness to Christ: and so that city, marked by the blood of these great witnesses to the Lord, became a special center of the Christian faith.  St. Peter’s successors as the Bishops of Rome, who would eventually accept the beautiful title of “Pope” which means “Father,” and would continue to be leaders of the Church, especially in times of controversy.  From the earliest times, the whole Church looked to Rome as the custodian of the Faith of Peter: as the place where’s Peter’s great profession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” was kept safe in its purest form.  265 Bishops of Rome later, there is still a Pope in that city who leads us in charity, leads us in the integrity of the truth of the Faith, leads us in unity and in love.  Christ gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven: in the ancient world, when a King would recruit a steward to take care of the kingdom in his absence, he would give him the keys to represent the trust and the authority that the king was leaving in the hands of his steward until his return.  “I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David,” we read in today’s first reading, a reference to Eliakim, himself a steward of the Royal Palace.  Christ the King, before his departure for a time, gave the keys to a much greater kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, to his steward on earth, St. Peter.  This kingdom is not of this earth, but it is nurtured here, it begins here, and it will last forever.  And so we should love and respect our Holy Father, the pope, because he is Christ’s vicar on earth, Christ’s steward, Christ’s special representative for us. 

Let us foster in ourselves a hunger to know the teachings of the pope, the teachings of Peter, the teachings of our holy Mother the Church, and to make those teachings known in our world.  That is the light which will brighten our consciences and will help us to see clearly who Christ is, who he wants to be in our lives, how he wants to transform our hearts to be more like his.