22 February 2027 · Latin Rite
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“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18
In the second week of Lent the Church pauses for a feast of white: the Chair of St Peter. A chair seems a strange thing to celebrate. But in the ancient world the cathedra was the seat from which a teacher taught and a bishop presided; Jesus himself speaks of the scribes who “sit on Moses' seat” (Matthew 23:2). Since at least the fourth century the Church of Rome has kept this day in honour of Peter's chair, that is, of the mission Christ gave him to teach, to guide and to hold the Church together in one faith. We do not honour a piece of wood. We honour the Lord, who chose a fisherman and made him a rock, and who still keeps his Church united around Peter's successor.
The Gospel takes us to Caesarea Philippi, far in the north, where a great rock face rose above a shrine to pagan gods. There Jesus asks two questions. First: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The answers are generous but not enough: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, a prophet. Then the question that no one can answer for us: “But who do you say that I am?” Simon speaks for all: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus tells him that this faith is a gift: “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Then he gives Simon a new name. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” In Aramaic the name and the rock are the same word, Kepha. He gives him the keys of the kingdom, the sign of a steward over the king's house, as Isaiah once said of Eliakim: “he shall open, and no one shall shut.” And he gives the power to bind and to loose.
Peter did not become a rock by his own strength. The same chapter tells how he tried to turn Jesus away from the cross and heard the words “Get behind me, Satan!” Later he denied his Master three times. His firmness comes from the prayer of Jesus: “I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” That is why the first reading sounds so humble. The old Apostle writes as “an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ,” and asks the shepherds to tend the flock “not under compulsion but willingly,” not lording it over others but being examples, until “the chief shepherd appears.” The Psalm names that chief Shepherd: “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.” In Lent this feast reminds us that conversion is never private. We return to God within the one flock, under the one Shepherd, held together by the faith Peter confessed.
Theme: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”
The question of Jesus, the rock made by grace, the keys of service and shepherds after the heart of Christ.
“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Psalm 23:1
“He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”” Matthew 16:15–16
Apply: Write down in one sentence who Jesus is for you, and pray it each morning this week.
“I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open.” Isaiah 22:22
“but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”” Luke 22:32
Apply: Pray daily this week for the Holy Father, that his faith may not fail.
“For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.” Ezekiel 34:11
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”” Matthew 16:19
Apply: Use the keys Christ gave his Church: make a good confession this Lent.
“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4
“Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away.” 1 Peter 5:3–4
Apply: Parents, teachers, leaders: serve those in your care by example this week.
The Church stands on Peter's confession of faith, made firm by Christ's prayer.
With Peter's successor we confess: you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
Take-home resolution: Pray each day of this week for the Pope, your bishop and your parish priest.
Dear brothers and sisters, in the middle of Lent we put on white and celebrate the Chair of St Peter. We do not honour a chair. We honour the mission Christ gave to a fisherman: to teach, to guide and to hold the Church together in one faith.
At Caesarea Philippi Jesus asked: who do people say that the Son of Man is? Many answers, all too small. Then: but who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15). This question comes to each of us. No one can answer it for us.
Simon answered: you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And Jesus said: flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. Faith is a gift. Then he gave him a new name: you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18).
Peter was not strong by nature. He tried to keep Jesus from the cross. He denied him three times. But Jesus prayed for him, that his faith would not fail, and told him: strengthen your brothers. The rock is made by grace.
That is why the first reading is so humble. Peter, an old man, calls himself an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and asks shepherds to tend the flock willingly, not lording it over others but being examples (1 Peter 5:2–3). Authority in the Church is service.
Today let us pray for our Holy Father, for our bishop, for our priests. And let us answer the question of Jesus with Peter's words, from our hearts: you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Amen.
Children, Jesus gave Simon a new name: Peter, which means rock! Peter was not always brave, but Jesus made him strong and made him the leader of his Church.
Today the Pope helps the Church like Peter did. Let us say a Hail Mary for the Pope today!
Grant, we pray, almighty God, that no tempests may disturb us, for you have set us fast on the rock of the Apostle Peter's confession of faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen. Let us also pray: Lord Jesus, Son of the living God, you built your Church on Peter. Keep our Holy Father strong in faith and gentle in love; bless our bishop and priests; and make us one flock, faithful to you through this Lent and always. Amen.
As Lent’s second week opens, the Church stops to keep a feast, and the violet gives way to white. The Chair of St Peter is not a feast of a piece of furniture. A chair is where a teacher sits and where a bishop presides, and this feast gives thanks for the service of teaching and unity that Christ entrusted to Peter.
The two readings show the two sides of that gift. In the Gospel, a fisherman is named a rock and given keys. In the First Reading, the letter under his name speaks to other elders as one of them, and it warns them not to “lord it over” anyone. Psalm 23 stands between the two: the true shepherd of the flock is the Lord. The key words are rock, keys and shepherd.
Setting.
This letter is addressed to Christians scattered across the Roman provinces of Asia Minor (1:1), people who were few in number and looked on with suspicion. Its great theme is how to stand firm in suffering. Now, near the end, it turns to those who lead these small communities.
The letter bears Peter’s name and the Church has always received it as Scripture under that name. Its closing mentions Silvanus, through whom it was written (5:12), and greetings from the church “in Babylon” (5:13), most likely a coded name for Rome. Many scholars think the polished Greek points to a helper or to a disciple writing in Peter’s name after his death. Others hold that the Silvanus of 5:12 explains the Greek. Either way, this is the voice of the Petrine tradition, and it comes to us from Rome.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Now as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ,” (5:1)
He could call himself apostle, as in 1:1. Here he appeals to what he saw: the sufferings. He was also the one who denied the Lord during those sufferings, and he holds the authority Christ gave him as one who has received mercy.
“to tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it” (5:2)
A note on the text. The words “exercising the oversight” (one Greek word, related to episkopos, bishop) are missing from some very old manuscripts. The NRSV keeps them, and the POC does not have them. The sense of the verse does not change.
“Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock.” (5:3)
The Greek word behind “those in your charge” is klēroi, the portions allotted. The English “clergy” comes from the same root, yet here the word is used of the people. The pastor’s method is the example of his life.
“And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away.” (5:4)
The crown of the Greek games was a wreath of leaves that withered within days. This one does not fade. The pastor is not told to look for his reward in honor or income now.
How the Church reads it.
The Second Vatican Council took up this language when it taught that the bishops are to govern as vicars of Christ, in the spirit of service (Lumen Gentium 27). The Catechism says that the Good Shepherd ought to be the model of the bishop’s pastoral office (CCC 896). St Augustine put the balance in a famous sentence to his people, which the Council quotes: for you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian (Sermon 340; Lumen Gentium 32). It fits this passage very well: an elder among elders, a sheep among the sheep, and still a shepherd.
Setting.
Jesus has taken his disciples north, out of Galilee, to the district of Caesarea Philippi at the foot of Mount Hermon, near one of the sources of the Jordan. The town had been rebuilt by Philip the tetrarch and named in honor of Caesar, and the place was known for a cave and a shrine to the Greek god Pan. So in a region of other gods and of imperial power, Jesus asks who he is.
This is a turning point in the Gospel. Straight after these verses Jesus begins to speak openly of his suffering, and Peter, who has just been called a rock, tries to stop him and is told, “You are a stumbling block to me” (16:23). The reading stops before that, but it must not be forgotten: the rock is a man who still has much to learn. Mark 8:27–30 and Luke 9:18–21 also give Peter’s confession. The words about the rock and the keys are found only in Matthew.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”” (16:15)
The “you” is plural in Greek. Jesus asks all of them, and Simon answers for all. Opinions about Jesus are not enough, however respectful.
“Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”” (16:16)
“Living” is a small word with weight in a place of carved gods. Mark has only “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29). Matthew’s fuller form reaches further.
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” (16:17)
“Flesh and blood” is a Hebrew way of saying a mere human being. Peter’s insight is a gift. All faith begins this way (CCC 153 quotes this verse).
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (16:18)
Abraham was once called the rock from which Israel was cut (Isaiah 51:1–2), and some interpreters hear that echo. A change of name in the Bible means a new mission, as with Abram and Jacob. The builder is Christ; “I will build” is his own promise, and so the promise depends on him rather than on Peter’s strength.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,” (16:19)
In 18:18 the power to bind and loose is given to the disciples together (“you” plural). The keys are said to Peter alone. The Catechism draws that distinction: Peter received a specific authority, and the college of apostles, united to its head, also received the power to bind and loose (CCC 553, 881).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that the Lord made Simon alone the rock of his Church and gave him the keys, and that the Bishop of Rome, Peter’s successor, is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity of the bishops and of the faithful (CCC 881–882, quoting Lumen Gentium 23). It explains binding and loosing as authority to absolve sins, to give doctrinal judgments and to make disciplinary decisions (CCC 553).
It also says that on the rock of the faith confessed by Peter, Christ built his Church (CCC 424). The Fathers read the rock in more than one way. St Leo the Great, whose sermon on Peter the Church reads in the Office of Readings on this feast, says that out of the whole world one man, Peter, is chosen (in substance). St Augustine, late in life, recalled that he had explained the rock sometimes as Peter and sometimes as Christ, and he left the reader to choose (Retractations, in substance). The two are not rivals: Christ is the foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11), and it is Christ who makes Peter a rock.
Does “the rock” mean Peter himself or Peter’s faith?
The natural reading of the words is that Jesus is speaking of Peter, because the name and the promise come in one breath. Many non-Catholic scholars now agree with that. Catholic teaching does not separate the man from his confession: Peter is the rock as the one who confesses Christ (CCC 424, 552, 881). Other Christians understand this text and its application to the Bishop of Rome differently, and St John Paul II asked them to help seek a way of exercising this ministry that all could recognize as a service of love (Ut Unum Sint 95).
Was Peter ever in Rome? The New Testament does not say so plainly.
It does not narrate it, but the early witness is strong. 1 Peter 5:13 most likely points to Rome as “Babylon”. The letter of St Clement of Rome (about AD 96) speaks of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, and St Irenaeus (about AD 180) names them as founders of the Church of Rome (Against Heresies 3). Excavations under St Peter’s Basilica found a small shrine of the second century, on the spot that Christians of that age honored as Peter’s memorial.
If the Pope is the rock, does that mean he cannot sin or make a mistake?
No. Peter himself is called a stumbling block five verses later and later denied the Lord. Popes confess their sins like other Christians. Infallibility is a much narrower thing: when the Pope, as supreme teacher, definitively proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals, the Holy Spirit keeps him from error, so that the Church stays in the truth (CCC 889–891). It does not extend to his private opinions or his practical decisions.
Rome was already keeping this day in the fourth century. A Roman calendar of AD 354 lists it on 22 February. In the apse of St Peter’s Basilica, Bernini’s great bronze throne encloses an old wooden chair, and in early writers such as St Cyprian, “the chair of Peter” already stands for the Roman see. Because this is a feast, the Gloria is sung today although it is Lent, and white replaces violet, with the proper readings taking the place of those for the weekday. Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Catholics in Kerala have three different liturgies and are one in communion with Peter’s successor. It is a fitting day to pray for the Pope by name, and for the unity of all Christians.