Primacy of Peter

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On this faith check let’s talk about our first pope, St. Peter.  I remember well a conversation I once had with a Protestant pastor who told me that if Peter were truly the first pope, he thought he’d see him exercising his papacy more in the Bible.

Peter was no ordinary apostle.  Peter’s name appears more than all of the other apostles combined and in every list of the apostles’ names, Peter comes first, while Judas Iscariot is last.  Peter pays the temple tax on behalf of Jesus and the apostles in Matthew 17.¹

In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is the one chosen by God to take the Gospel first to the Jews in Acts 2,² to the Samaritans in Acts 8 ³ and to the Gentiles in Acts 10.⁴ Peter performs the first miracle in Acts 3,⁵ pronounces judgment on Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 ⁶ and gives the decisive teaching at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. ⁷

Every team needs a coach and every company needs a CEO.  Yes, Jesus is our King, but he also left Peter to be the head pastor of his flock on earth.

1 – vv. 24-27

2 – 2:14-40

3 – 8:14-24

4 – 10:1ff

5 – 3:1-10

6 – 5:1-6

7 – 15:7ff

 

Keys of the Kingdom

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Many of our separated brothers and sisters ask where we find a “pope” in the Bible.  One example is in St. Matthew 16, where Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”¹

In the ancient world, kingdoms would have a leader underneath the king who was responsible for the administration of the government—we might call them the prime ministers.  We find an example of this in Isaiah 22,² when God declares that Shebna, the Prime Minister of Israel, will be deposed for his sins and replaced by Eliakim, whom God says will be a father to Israel and will carry the key of the house of David—“what he opens none shall shut; and what he shuts none shall open.”

When Jesus gave Peter the keys in Matthew 16, the apostles already understood their significance.  Peter was to be their leader, the prime minister that will shepherd Christ’s Church.  “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”³

What a gift we have in Pope Benedict, who still carries the keys today.

1 -  Mt. 16:19

2 -  see Is. 22: 20-25

3 -  Mt. 16:19

 

The Teaching Authority of the Church

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Many scoff at the Church’s precepts and rules, and can’t fathom how our relationship with the Church could affect our relationship with Christ.

Let us remember that the high priests of Israel, due to their office, could inquire of the Lord.  And recall Caiaphas’ prophecy about Jesus’ mission, which John 11 states was not said of his own accord, but in virtue of his being high priest that year.¹

Our Lord upheld the legitimacy of the teaching office when He said in Matthew 23, “the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you,” ² though He quickly warned not to follow their bad example.

Jesus commissioned His apostles to be the leaders of His Church.  He told them, “As the Father sent me, so I send you,”³ and “He who hears you hears me and he who rejects you rejects me.”⁴

The popes and bishops of the Catholic Church succeed the apostles in their teaching office,⁵ and it is they who, over the centuries, have passed on the Faith to us through creeds, Church councils, even Scripture itself.

We are called to accept the Church’s teachings with joy,⁶ knowing that the Church is a good mother who desires our eternal happiness—and, after all, who could reject his own mother?

1 -  Jn. 11:50

2 -  Mt. 23:2

3 -  Jn. 20:21

4 -  Lk. 10:16

5 -  See The Catechism of the Catholic Church 77, 861-2.

6 -  cf. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 25

What is Truth?

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In our culture religion is often considered a mere matter of personal taste.  Just as some prefer vanilla and others chocolate, you have your religion and I have mine.

But Jesus Christ did not just claim to be another prophet or spiritual teacher; He claimed to be Truth itself, as when He said, “I am the Way the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father but through me.”

Upon hearing Jesus’ truth claims, Pilate scoffed, “What is truth?,”¹ sounding very much like a skeptic in our own day.

But every person, ancient or modern, must confront Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah, the Son of God, whose blood atones for our sins, who dies and rises again, and will return as King and Judge of the world.

Such claims have only two possible responses: true or false.  For if you claim to be God and the Savior of the world, you either are or you aren’t.  As C.S. Lewis wrote, Jesus could have either been a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord—but the one thing he could not have been was a mere “good moral teacher,” as so many say.²

But if Jesus is truly the Lord, then He is the Lord of all—and that’s not a matter of personal taste!

1 -  Jn. 18:8

2 -  See Mere Christianity, Book 2, Chapter 3.

 

 

Organized Religion?

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It’s something we’ve all heard before: I believe in God, but not organized religion.
But as Catholics we believe that Jesus started a Church—yes an organized religion, if you will.

The Church is a gift to the world, which God has ordained as the vehicle in which we are sanctified and grow on the way to our heavenly destination.

Above all, the Catholic Church is a family.  Man is not an island, as it was once famously said, and we need the community found in our brothers and sisters in the Faith.
A visible Church is necessary for the dispensing of the seven sacraments, which Jesus instituted for the forgiveness of sins and growth in grace.

And God has always desired that His people gather to give Him glory by corporate, liturgical worship and sacrifice, which is fulfilled in the New Covenant by the Holy Mass.

Yes, the organized institution of the Church has often had its share of scandals and sins.  The human face of the Church can be messy and imperfect.  But God does not desire for us to escape to a spiritual island or alternative religion, but to serve Him and His people in the Church He founded and has promised to be with until He returns in glory.

 

 

Faith and Reason

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“Come let us reason together, says the Lord” – Isaiah 1:18.

Many in our day strictly divide faith and reason, seeing science as based on logic and objective truth, but religion as solely emotional and subjective.

Not so, says the Catholic Church.  Faith and reason complement and assist one another in the pursuit of truth.  All truth is God’s truth and ultimately leads to Him who is Truth itself, Jesus Christ, so there is nothing to fear from scientific inquiry.

In fact, for centuries the Catholic Church was the patron of the arts and sciences.  St. Thomas Aquinas used Greek philosophy to show the logical foundation of the Catholic Faith, many of the great scientific discoveries have been made by Catholic priests or scientists, convinced that the universe operated by fixed laws established by the one true God, not the mere whims of the gods as the pagans had previously believed.

Of course, faith is a gift and is not based on reason alone.  Nevertheless, as Sir Thomas More says in the classic film A Man For All Seasons, “God made the angels to show His splendor, the animals for their innocence, and the plants for simplicity, but God made man to serve him wittily in the tangle of His mind.”

 

Persecution of Catholics in England

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You’ve heard how the Pilgrims fled religious persecution in England, but have you ever heard how Catholics were persecuted there?

Recent scholarship such as Eamon Duffy’s book The Stripping of the Altars show that the vast majority of the English people did not freely choose to leave the Catholic Church, but were coerced into it.  In fact, prior to King Henry VIII’s break with Rome, England was known throughout Europe as “Mary’s Dowry” because of its great piety.  But under King Henry, Queen Elizabeth I, and others, failure to outwardly conform to the new state religion resulted in fines or imprisonment.  Hiding a Catholic priest was considered a treasonable act punishable by death.  Many suffered dearly, including famous martyrs like Sir Thomas More, or the 40 English martyrs that Pope John Paul II canonized.

Those openly professing Catholicism were barred from important positions in government and society well into the 1800s, and English law to this day prohibits a monarch from being Catholic.

Convincing evidence also shows that William Shakespeare was one such underground Catholic and that his plays included veiled appeals to the Queen for religious toleration.

So let us thank God that we can freely and openly practice our Faith, and honor all those who could not.

 

Temporal Consequences for Sin

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Common sense tells us that our sins have consequences.  If after committing a sin, we confess, then God promises to forgive us.  Yet there can still remain what the Church calls a “temporal punishment,” or consequence, for our sin.

For instance, in 2 Samuel 12 after David confesses his sin of adultery, the prophet Nathaniel tells him that the Lord has forgiven him, but nevertheless he will suffer the death of his child as a consequence of his sin.¹  Our relationship with God is a personal one and our sins are not just rule violations, but personal offenses that need to be mended.

We can fulfill the temporal punishments for our sins through sincere sorrow for our sins, prayers, sacrifices, and acts of charity.

But as part of the Body of Christ, we can also assist in coming to the aid of our brothers and sisters, both living and dead.  This is the basic principle of the Church’s practice of indulgences, and undoubtedly what St. Paul has in mind in Colossians 1:24 where he says, “I rejoice in my sufferings, and complete what is lacking in Christ’s affliction for the sake of his body, the Church.”  Or perhaps it’s put best in 1 Peter 4:8, which simply states, “love covers a multitude of sins.”

1 -  2 Sam. 12:13-14

Supporting our Priests

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I once spoke with a priest of a large suburban parish with thousands of members, who told me that he could count the number of dinner invitations he had received over the past year from his parishioners on one hand.  This shocked me as I knew he was very busy with his ministry, and I assumed that he was frequently invited to the homes and activities of his parishioners.  Yet such was not the case.

It is easy to take our priests for granted.  Our priests are men who have sacrificed everything—marriage, family, children—for the sake of the Gospel.¹  And yet they are but men who, like everyone, need to be encouraged, welcomed, and loved.

Let us find ways to involve them in the lives of our families.  Let us pray for them that they will grow in the grace of God and be protected from the attacks of the enemy;

And let us pray the Lord to send more priestly laborers into the harvest fields, so that the People of God might be sanctified, supported, and led in our earthly pilgrimage toward our Father’s House.

1 -  cf. Mt. 19:10-12; 1 Cor. 7:32-35

Development of the Living Church

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The celebrated English convert, John Henry Cardinal Newman, pointed out that the Catholic Church can be likened to a tiny acorn which grows into a tree—though it looks entirely different, it remains in its essence, the same thing.  Likewise, a human grows from a tiny child to an adolescent through adulthoold to old age, yet he remains the same person with the same DNA.

So too the Church grows and develops as the living Body of Christ.  Of course, the Church of over one billion people today is not a mirror image of the relatively tiny Church in the first century Mediterranean we read about in the New Testament—nor should it be.  The Church’s organization and outward forms are dynamic, not static, and must change to meet the needs of the age—yet the Church remains the same Church believing the same Faith.

The Church’s doctrine also grows and develops—never contradicting itself, but deepening with years of reflection and clarification.  For instance, it was not until Christ’s divinity was denied that the Nicene Council gave us the Creed we profess each Sunday at Mass, which states precisely what we do and do not believe about our Lord.

And so the grows the Church until the consummation of time.

Sacramentals

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In the minds of non-Catholics, Catholicism often conjures images of Catholic stuff: candles, crucifixes, rosaries, statues, holy water, oils,
and the like.  These are called sacramentals—not to be confused with the seven sacraments, they are material items that the Lord uses as conduits of his blessing.
Because of our belief in sacramentals, Catholics have sometimes been accused of practicing magic.  But magic is the pagan or new age belief that an object has power in and of itself.  Sacramentals are the Christian belief that the living and true God uses His creation as instruments of grace and healing.

Sacramentals appear all throughout the Scriptures.  James speaks of anointing with oil.¹ Acts of the Apostles tells us that Paul’s handkerchiefs brought healing power to those they touched.²In the Old Testament, Elisha’s bones were used to bring a dead man back to life.³

And of course the Gospels portray Our Lord himself often using water, mud or even his own spit to perform mighty works of healing and cleansing, a power which Jesus passed on to his priests to be continued to this day.⁴  Sacramentals are neither magic nor make believe, but powerful weapons to be utilized in our spiritual journeys.

1 -  Js. 5:14

2 -  Acts 19:11-12

3 -  2 Kgs. 13:21

4 -  cf. Mt. 10:7-8; Lk. 10:18-20; Jn. 20:21-23, etc.

Purgatory

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Few Catholic doctrines are more disputed than that of purgatory.  And yet, if it is properly understood, we see that purgatory is a gift of God’s mercy. 

Jesus did not come to merely forgive the penalty for our sins, but to cleanse us and make us His new creations.

Revelation 21:27 says, “nothing impure will enter heaven.”  Those of us who die in a state of grace—or are “saved”—and still have selfishness and sin remaining on our souls, must undergo a purification before entrance into heaven is possible.

So purgatory is not a second chance at heaven, but simply a final stage of growing in holiness.

Notice that Jesus in Matthew 12 speaks of sins that will “not be forgiven in this age or in the age to come.” ¹  And in 1 Corinthians 3, St. Paul writes that on Judgment Day there will be some who “suffer loss… [they will still] be saved, but only as through fire.”²

C.S. Lewis, the famous Anglican Christian writer, believed in purgatory and compared it to the burning sensation of mouthwash after having one’s tooth pulled at the dentist’s office.³

Indeed, while purgatory may involve pain, it will not be without joy, for it is the threshold to the gates of paradise.

1 -  12:32

2 -  3:15

3 -  Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, 107-109.

Incorruptible Bodies of Saints

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‘Remember o man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’  We hear these words each Ash Wednesday to remind us of death and judgment awaiting us all.  While our bodies are the source of so much focus in our culture, they will decay into dust, until they are ultimately resurrected and reunited with our souls at the end of the world.

God has granted exceptions to this, however, in the “incorruptibles”—saints whose bodies are miraculously preserved in tact after death, as a visible sign of their holiness.  These miracles have withstood in-depth scientific and medical examinations that rule out any possible hoaxes and make clear that they are entirely distinct from those bodies preserved through extreme temperatures or mummification.

When St. Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes was examined in 1909, thirty years after her death, her body appeared the same as when she had been alive: her body was odorless and her skin was supple and had coloration—while the rosary in her hands had rusted over.  Today her body can still be observed and pilgrims state that looks as if she were merely asleep.

And then there’s the St. Anthony of Padua.  Years after his death his body had decayed, but God had preserved the great preacher’s tongue alone—those present reported that it was perfectly pink.

Eucharistic Miracles

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For 2,000 years, Catholics have believed that the Holy Eucharist more than a mere symbolic reminder, but the actual Body and Blood of Christ.  Of course, the Eucharist still looks and tastes like bread and wine, but a miraculous change takes place that our eyes cannot perceive.

Throughout history, however, God has sometimes worked Eucharistic Miracles, in which the Eucharist physically appears as flesh and blood.

One of the most famous such events occurred in the year 700 A.D. at Lanciano, Italy.  During Mass one day, a monk who had been doubting his Faith was shocked as the bread and wine suddenly changed into flesh and blood before his very eyes.  News of the miracle spread rapidly, and the miraculous flesh and blood have been preserved to this day in the church.

In the 1970s, this same flesh and blood were submitted to a rigorous scientific examination. The study determined that there they contained no preservatives; that the flesh was of human heart tissue; while the blood was human blood, type AB. It was also noted that the receptacle that contained them for centuries had not been hermetically sealed, meaning that they had been exposed to the elements and otherwise would have decayed or spoiled within days. The study concluded that there was no scientific possibility of fraud, confirming the belief of the faithful that Eucharistic Miracle at Lanciano was authentic.

Lectio Divina

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When the Holy Father says that the practice of a certain devotion would lead to nothing less than the renewal of the Church,¹ we do well to sit up and take notice.

Pope Benedict XVI said exactly this about the practice of lectio divina, which is an ancient form of praying over the Scriptures.  In lectio divina, a passage is read and followed by silence.  The hearers focus on a single word or phrase that jumps out at them and allow the “still small voice of the Lord” to speak to their hearts.  The same passage is read another two or three more times, with each reading followed by another period of silence, and a time of sharing may follow for the edification of all.

Many parishes are starting groups for lectio divina and it can also be done during individual prayer time.  Sacred Scripture is our spiritual food, the lamp unto our feet and director of our steps.  But this can’t happen if God’s Word remains on our bookshelf collecting dust.

Let us crack open our Bibles and not only read God’s Word, but prayerfully and slowly listen to what the Holy Spirit is speaking personally to us this day.

1 -  From Address of Pope Benedict XVI to the Participants of the International Congress Organized to Commemorate the
40^th Anniversary of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation ‘Dei Verbum’: “If [Lectio divina] is effectively
promoted, this practice will bring ot the Church – I am convinced of it – a new spiritual springtime.”