Two feasts of the Latin Rite Liturgy that honor Peter’s role of unifier and the Church’s role as the historical expression of the Presence of God’s Kingdom in the world (not the limits of the Kingdom, but a Sacrament of the Kingdom) are the Chair of Peter (2/22) and the Church of St. John Lateran (11/9), the Bishop of Rome’s Cathedral.  So the Chair or cathedra is celebrated in February and the site of the Chair or Cathedral in November.  What do these bookended feasts (just before and just after the extended celebration of the Incarnation) tell us about God’s Reign and the role of the Ecclesia (the Church) – the people set apart (1 Peter 2.9) – to accomplish God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.”

We know from all four Gospel accounts that the People of God are “called” by baptism to accomplish God’s desire on earth in Jesus’ name.  It is for this “mission” that the Church was gathered, by Jesus to continue and bring to fullness, his Mission of salvation.  In today’s Gospel from Matthew we hear that Peter was selected to hold the key to the reign of God because he recognized and named Jesus’ mission of Messiah.  The key to the Kingdom is granted for the purpose of holding the community of Jesus followers together so that they together can be the “gate” to the Kingdom on earth.  

So the cartoons and jokes have it all wrong in a way.  Peter’s key is not about permitting a few to pass through some “pearly gates” into “heaven” after death, but about entrance and participation in the Reign of God in all its reality, both in history (on earth) and in its completed glory (in heaven).  So Peter will not (presumably) stand or sit at a desk to judge who gets in, but Peter and the Church he is commissioned to hold together, serve to be the gate and key to God’s Reign on earth; NOT TO EXCLUDE, BUT TO WELCOME IN.  Obviously, the Church’s liturgy is not just referring to the historical Peter of Galilee alone, but those who were called to take up his work on earth, and the whole Church of all the Baptized that the Papacy serves to care for and protect.  The keys to the Kingdom and the Church are to be understood then as the witnessed lives of unity of faith and merciful love that ideally is the ordinary practice of the whole Church and all its members and leaders!

Now, anyone who reads or listens to the news or follows social media these days knows that the Church – in its full baptized membership – all over the world has some hard work to do to become more faithful to this task of being the people set apart as the Key to the Reign of God.  Nothing new here – the Church is Semper Reformanda (always having to reform itself) and it is no accident either that the Church sets aside forty days every year for the whole Church, from the Pope to the newest baptized member, to focus on the specificities of reform that each of us needs to accomplish through God’s grace.

The Entrance Antiphon to today’s Mass reminds us the Peter failed in his task as key to the Reign of God – and then had to confess, brush himself off and help others who have failed.  In the first reading, the leaders of the communities of faith (priests and bishops) are to be generous, humble and exemplary expressions of the faith.  Only this way will they open the gates of God’s reign to the rest of the Church.  The Gospel reminds the rest of the Church that we are to let Peter show us the way to open the lock for the whole world.  The Church is to bind up the wounded here so that they are bound up and healed in God’s mercy, and the Church is to loosen the shackles of slavery to sin and death, so that all can move freely in God’s Reign.

But we, the baptized must allow our wounds to be bound up in love and we have to be willing to step out of the shackles of slavery to sin and its allure (as the Baptismal promises remind us).  It is God’s desire, revealed in Jesus, that we work together as one community of faith – not uniform, but united amid the very diversity of cultures, nations and peoples.  But that unity is about understanding and helping one another reject the common forms, and even the structures, of enslavement that lure us away from God’s Reign; the self-destructive and other-destructive behavior that too easily riddles the lives of the members and leaders of the Church – even the Pope, as Francis continually reminds us, and even as St. Peter himself knew first hand.

We must pray for ourselves and for one another; we must pray today for the bishops who are gathered in Rome on this great feast of Peter, to discern how God wants to bind up (heal) those who have been wounded by sexual abuse, and the failure of leadership to protect the vulnerable. More burdensome, but just as necessary is the call to pray for those who have perpetrated the harm. And, we are compelled to pray that leadership will have the wisdom to transform the way the Church operates on a day- to-day basis to allow the key to open the gates of salvation to everyone.   

Only when we pray for ourselves and one another will we understand what it means to really be the Key and the Gate to the Reign of God on earth.  Only then can we appreciate what grace God bestows on the world through the wounded vessels of clergy and laity alike. Only then will each one of us know what needs binding and loosing in our own hearts.

“Jesus said to them:  Who do YOU say that I am?”