Homily
for the Feast of
the
Chair of St. Peter
Feb. 22, 2025
Collect
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Christ's Charge to Peter (Raphael)
“Almighty God, you have set us
fast on the rock of the Apostle Peter’s confession of faith” (Collect).
It’s a strange title for a
feast: St. Peter’s Chair. Two of the most famous monuments in St.
Peter’s Basilica draw our attention to Peter’s furniture. Bernini’s Glory, behind the high
altar, is supposed to encase the relic of a chair Peter actually used. In fact, there are fragments of an acacia
wood chair that could date from the 1st century, but it has been reinforced by
oak added ca. the 6th century, all of which Bernini closed up in bronze. The 2d monument is the bronze statue of Peter
to which pilgrims throng, whose foot has been worn smooth by pilgrims’
touch—probably including by most of us; it portrays Peter seated in a teaching
pose, holding his keys.
But we’re not celebrating furniture, as if
it were the feast of St. Ikea. We read
that Pilate “sat on the judge’s bench at a place called the Stone Pavement”
(John 19:13). In courts of law judges
still preside from “the bench.” Many
universities endow a prestigious “chair,” honoring a notable benefactor or a
distinguished professor. The “chair” is
a professorship, a teaching position, a post of authority. The principal church of a diocese takes its
name from the bishop’s presidential chair, his cathedra.
Beyond the name of the feast, however, the
liturgy doesn’t mention chairs. Instead,
it refers frequently to Peter’s faith.
Playing on his name, the collect calls that faith a rock. Christ appointed him the rock, the foundation
stone, of his Church (Matt 16:18). St.
Leo the Great expands on Christ’s words in today’s patristic reading: “You are Peter: tho I am the inviolable rock,
the cornerstone that makes both one, the foundation apart from which no one can
lay any other, yet you also are a rock, for you are given solidity by my
strength, so what is my very own because of my power is common between us thru
your participation.”[1] Peter’s faith and Peter himself are
simultaneously the rock recognized and chosen by Christ—or by the Father: “flesh and blood has not revealed this to
you, but my heavenly Father” (16:17).
The Glory of Bernini
(by Deacon Greg Kandra)
Peter is chosen to stand fast, like a rock,
against all the powers of Hades. Matthew
uses the Greek word hades (16:18), rendered as “netherworld,”
“underworld,” or “hell.” It means death,
and the hellish powers of death and alienation from all things good, beautiful,
and true. Peter and his faith stand fast
against death and the powers of hell, linking us securely to “the Christ, the
Son of the living God” (16:16).
That secure link thru Peter to Christ was why Don
Bosco was so devoted to the men who sat on Peter’s chair. “I intend that the members and pupils of the
humble Congregation of St. Francis de Sales … should not only accept promptly,
respectfully, and with simplicity of mind and heart the decisions of the Pope
in regard to dogma and discipline, but that they should also, even in debatable
matters, always follow his opinion as that of a private doctor rather than that
of any other theologian or doctor in the whole world.” “The Pope’s word ought to be our rule in
everything and for everything.”
He also underwent trauma when a booklet he
wrote for the 19th centennial of Peter’s martyrdom, meant as a tribute to the
Papacy and an act of devotion, was misinterpreted and almost condemned by the
Index. In St. Peter’s Centenary Don
Bosco had written that whether St. Peter actually came to Rome was not a “point
of dogma or religion.” Beginning with
Luther, some Protestants denied he’d come to Rome, as a way of undermining
papal authority. Some in Rome and Turin
thought it was a “point of dogma” and wanted the booklet banned until it
was corrected. (It was only in the time
of Pius XII that Peter’s bones were discovered in the scavi under the
basilica.) Lemoyne tells us that the doubt
cast upon his loyalty to the Holy Father “was a most painful blow to Don
Bosco’s very sensitive heart.”[2] Another Salesian called it “the most painful
period of Don Bosco’s long and eventful life.”[3] For the booklet’s 2d printing, Don Bosco made
the clarifications suggested by several experts (including, ironically, Canon Gastaldi).
A few years later, Don Bosco spent a long
time in Rome during the Vatican Council, working behind the scenes to secure a
definition of papal infallibility. The
Holy Father mattered to him precisely as Peter’s successor, the rock securing the
apostolic faith, protecting the unchanging truth of the Gospel from age to age
even tho its presentation may change according to time and culture. So we’ll pray today in the prayer over the
gifts that thru Peter’s teaching the Church may “hold the faith in its
integrity.”
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