Bound in Love

From the gospel today, we are shown that Simon son of Jonah is given a special role and a new name. His special role is to be the Vicar of Christ, he is to be the steward of the priest-king whose Church he will keep and guard. From St. Paul’s letter to the Romans today, we get some guidance for any Vicar — any steward of God’s gifts — on how to know what is really part of that mission so the steward can be focused on the most important things.

Paul says in a voice of wonder: “how inscrutable are God’s judgments and how unsearchable his ways!” He is not just giving up on knowing God; he is reminding us how great God is. This is a great reminder to all of us who are put in positions of authority — especially positions of religious authority — that the way forward is difficult to discern because we do not know the mind of the Lord, nor have we been his counselor. Even if we are leaders, we are the Lord’s followers and his servants. So Paul is reminding everyone from Peter down to the current Pope, down to bishops and priests and even fathers in their families that we cannot be a good leader if we are not a true follower of Christ.

So why is Peter given the keys to the kingdom? We know from many other gospel stories that Peter is often clueless and fearful. Why is Peter given the authority to determine what is correct and what is not correct? Why is Peter given the authority to bind us to certain rules and to loose us from other rules? I’m going to suggest that it is because Peter sees.

Peter sees through the surface activity. Remember that some said Jesus was Elijah, the great prophet who did some amazing things. Elijah is the one who had the great competition with the 400 priests of Baal, and they couldn’t start the fire but he could just by praying to God. And he was followed by many other great and powerful prophets, like Jeremiah. Jeremiah was given the mission to prophesy to the wayward Israelites that unless they straightened up they would be sent to exile in Babylon. And of course, they didn’t straighten up, and they were sent into exile in Babylon. Some in the crowd said that Jesus was John the Baptist. John had preached about the need for repentance, and he had been willing to preach powerfully to the powerful. And he paid for that with his life.

Peter sees past all these amazing people and their amazing actions to the inscrutable judgment that Jesus is the Christ. Peter sees through all the activity to the deeper judgment that Jesus is the anointed one that all of Israel has been expecting for so many centuries. He saw and said the truly important thing.

For any of us to be effective disciples of Christ, we must see clearly. In another place St. Paul says that we now see dimly as through a mirror. In the darkness of the present world, no wonder we find God’s judgments to be inscrutable and difficult to understand. We have to try to be like St. Peter and see clearly in a darkened world with our clouded eyes.

I think this is a message that’s particularly appropriate for fathers. The world tells us that the job of a father is to accumulate enough cash to provide entertainment for his kids and get them through the educational system so they can go out to get a job that pays enough for them to repeat the cycle with their kids.

I don’t think that’s what true fatherhood really is. A good father teaches the sons and daughters the family history and the family purpose. There has to be more to our worldly lives than getting and spending. Sometimes to know where we need to go we need to know where we came from, and that is why the family history is so important for family vitality.

The Catholic Church is the family of God, so a good Papa — a good Pope — will spend his energies trying to see clearly through the distractions of the world so that he can teach the sons and daughters of the Church where they came from, why they’re here, and where they should be headed. And that need for clear vision follows down the Church hierarchy to bishops and priests and to the papas of the laity in their families.

Just as the Holy Father needs to see through the distractions of meeting with celebrities and going to far-off places (as good as those things might be), so fathers in our families need to see through the lesser goods to the eternal good that is God. And we need to be able to share that vision in our families.

So many times in salvation history the people of God thought that God had abandoned them, but he never did. He loved them so much he eventually sent his Son to live with them and die for them. Then they understood, as Peter shows us today in the gospel. In a similar way, we earthly fathers need to teach our children about the most important thing so that they can see where the other but lesser important things naturally fit.

Football season is upon us for all levels, from high school through college and the pros. It is a fun time as individuals and teams compete to win a championship. As fun as that is, it cannot produce the same level of true happiness that we find when we are faithfully serving the Lord. So as fathers, we have to show our children and our friends how to be an enthusiastic football fan without letting that become more than it should be. Our children need to see by our actions that neither football nor soccer nor any sport is a valid reason for skipping Mass. And it goes beyond football season of course. We want to bless our children with the good things of this world, but the pace of technical progress is so fast we sometimes think an innovation is good and bring it into our families without thinking it through. Cell phones are great for communicating, but having a pocket-sized supercomputer connected to the Internet in the hands of a teenager is something that a father needs to think through carefully. He needs to see what is truly important and then say it to his children.

We will only develop the vision that Peter has if we commit to regular prayer time with our God. Peter walked and talked with Jesus Christ for many years, and it is through that relationship that he was able to see God’s inscrutable ways and get a glimpse into the mind of God so that he could be his faithful servant. Football season is no excuse for skipping Mass, and neither is it an excuse for skipping prayer time with God. Our relationship with our Lord is one of the truly important things about our lives. If we don’t cultivate a relationship with God, he won’t recognize us when he comes in the final days.

Let us all pray that we turn to God and make some effort to scrutinize his inscrutable ways, to investigate his unsearchable knowledge, to learn at least a bit of his infinite mind. Let us be bold like Peter, bold enough to blurt out, “you are the Christ.”