Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Apostle

Today's Mass Readings

I remember thinking as a child, “why on earth are we celebrating a chair, especially a chair that is probably broken since it is over 2000 years old!” But as St. Paul says, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.” When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me (kind of).

Realizing that this feast is celebrating the Pontifical Office of the Pope, it is right to hear St. Peter tell our Blessed Lord “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Where would we be without the Vicor of Christ, the Successor of St. Peter? We would be lost, sheep without a Shepherd.

St. Peter says this to the priests of the Church, “tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly, as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly.” But if he says this to the priests, we, the sheep must be good and obedient because the Shepherd takes the place of Christ. I am reminded of what the Rule of St. Benedict says about the Abbot, “He is believed to hold the place of Christ in the monastery.”

Can you, during this Lenten season, make your own homes like a little monastery? We can all seek to find Christ not only in our families and coworkers, no matter how hardened their own hearts are, and slowly bring them, with the help of God’s grace and power, back to the flock so that they can say like St. Peter, “You are the Christ [the one that I have been longing for].”

Reflection by Br. Maximilian Burkhart, OSB