This feast is a celebration of the authority of the Papacy.   In our all too libertarian culture we might ask why the Church would celebrate authority.  A person in authority seems to be understood as the one who curbs our fun, limits our freedom to do whatever we want, and reminds us of duty.

Conversely, the loving persons who hold authority in various structures often feel like a target – the one that everyone wants to shoot at on any given day to assert their independence from all authority.

When I teach undergraduates about the nature of the Church, one of the early questions I ask them is who has any authority in their lives?  Who tells them what they must do, or say, or have, to live the way they want to?  Nearly always they name parents as persons of authority in their worlds.  Sometimes they will name employers, often they would assert that I, their teacher, required things of them with certain authority.  Any of us can think of other authorities including officers of the law, doctors, civil leaders, coaches, and a whole host of roles.

What do they all have in common? I would ask.  The students would work their way to recognizing that each person or role that they named took care of them in an important way or provided what they want or need in their lives.  Parents provide life support, teachers provide education, and other persons provide jobs, safety, health etc.  Those are the human basics – but what about human existence itself?  God alone provides the whole of creation.  I am here now, in this life not of my will but of the constant loving will of God.  Of course, this is a faith statement – but no philosophy or science or other knowledge of humanity has come up with a satisfactory alternative.  So ultimate authority for human happiness lies in the one who creates human happiness.

What if an authority figure gives to another the power to represent him or her?  What if parents go on a trip and leave behind a child caretaker to provide basic protection care and service for the child?  That one’s authority will ultimately be more or less effective according to how well they imitate the care and service of the person they represent. 

Today’s first reading from the first letter of Peter, and the responsive Good Shepherd Psalm both remind us that the authority of God is always about creative love.  The one who functions with that authority must do so in the context of love that God shows each creature.  To fail in that is to abuse God’s authority.  But, and this is important, the authority itself represents God and is valid even if badly exercised.  If one knows that one is loved by God and served by that love, then there is an obligation to do what God asks in following the authorities he gives us.

The Gospel today expresses the authority that God bestows on the Church to speak and act on God’s behalf.  Peter, the rock of unity, has the power to hold the body together in Christ’s name, because he recognizes that Jesus is God’s voice on earth, that Jesus is the source of salvation and that he, Peter, must act in the manner of Jesus.  The first and greatest gift a Pope must have is faith in God’s plan and  gratitude for God’s salvation of all persons.  Therein lies our human flourishing.

Jesus recognizes in Peter’s faith statement the power of God to grant Divine Authority to one or another of the community.  Peter’s faith did not come from himself, but from God, and is the sign that Jesus has been looking for regarding the Father’s Will for Jesus’ human “stand in” in the relationships of the community.  By giving Peter the “keys” he in fact gives His own power to reveal God and the Good News of God’s love to Peter and his successors here on earth.   We often think of the power of Peter is to stand at the “pearly gates” of life after death and determine who gets into heaven, but the key is to the Church in this life, its sacraments, and the graces of faith, hope and love.  The key Peter has is the key to the “Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.”  Only when we grasp this and heed the call to Unity with the Body of Christ in this world, will we really enter the Kingdom of God.  Eternal life starts here and now in this moment, not when we go through the passage of the death of this body.   Our joy, our hope, our human fulfillment lies in living in the Reign of God here and now – and Peter’s Chair and keys are symbols of the authority of God that helps that to happen by uniting us in a community of love.