“And Jesus answering, said to him: ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.’ Then he commanded his disciples, that they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ.”
St. Peter, not resisting the Holy Spirit, “Extinguish not the spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19), but letting love act freely, proclaimed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Jesus calls Him blessed, because what the senses could not perceive was gifted by God. This is why Jesus calls him Simon Bar-Jonah, because though his father’s name is John, “Barjonas” means “son of a dove,” indicating that Simon is born in faith and love: “Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). It was not by great wisdom that St. Peter gleaned this knowledge of Christ, but love and grace opened this beautiful mystery to him: “Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration” (James 1:17). Seeing Jesus in truth by the gift of the Father, he becomes the first to acknowledge the divinity of Christ, for though there are admissions that He is the Son of God before this: “Nathanael answered him, and said: ‘Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel” (John 1:49); “And they that were in the boat came and adored him, saying: ‘Indeed thou art the Son of God” (Matthew 14:33), in these instances, He was thought to be chief among men: “I beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo, one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of days: and they present him before him. And he gave him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him” (Daniel 7:13-14), whereas Peter knows in truth that Jesus is consubstantial with the Father, having a likeness to the Father that is transcendently closer than a person to their earthly father. While this may be a rich insight, it applies to you, Theophila, in that God desires to unveil the depth of the mysteries of His love to you: “That being rooted and founded in love, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth: to know also the love of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:18-19), which is built by an ever greater familiarity with Him, as is seen here. Jesus then gives Simon a new name, making him the chief patriarch of the new covenant, just as Abram was named Abraham and became the father of faith: “Neither shall thy name be called any more Abram: but thou shalt be called Abraham: because I have made thee a father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5). The gift of a new name is a joyous occasion throughout the Scriptures, representing triumph and something beautiful to come: “To him that overcometh, I will give the hidden manna, and will give him a white counter, and in the counter, a new name written, which no man knoweth, but he that receiveth it” (Apocalypse 2:17), and so it is in this instance, that with a bold faith and true confession, St. Peter should be the shepherd of the Church. The Catholic Church, built upon this rock and shepherded by Simon Peter and the spiritual fathers that succeeded him, is thus declared to never be separated from the love and faith of Jesus, for despite fallen humanity’s best efforts, with sin and departures from within: “They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us” (1 John 2:19), and heresy and persecution without: “And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse: erring, and driving into error” (2 Timothy 3:12-13), she has never fallen. Thus, to hold fastidiously to her teaching on how to believe and instructions on how to live is to walk the safest possible path: “Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24). This can also mean that a sincere confession of faith in God’s love in truth will be secure against the gates of hell, for love closes the gates of all that is not the love of God and neighbor: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5), preventing slips into pride, sensuality, and vanity: “For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16). However, returning to the Church, there is a great familial security in the lineage of tradition and the boundaries of the magisterium, because even in crises such as when half of the bishops of the world were Arian, when Martin Luther led flocks astray like a terrible wind: “And when it was morning, the burning wind raised the locusts: and they came up over the whole land of Egypt: and rested in all the coasts of the Egyptians innumerable” (Exodus 10:13-14), or the wave of modernism that Pope St. Pius X decried, there is stability in the truth, which does not fail or fall away, but remains steadfast in the heart of the Church. False teaching always splinters, for it is built on sand and cannot withstand the storms of man’s natural desire for truth: “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof” (Matthew 7:27), but the teaching of the Catholic Church remains unified and pure, and so you can wrap yourself in her doctrines as a comfortable blanket and focus on your love story, going ever deeper into the mystery while safeguarded by truth: “I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved: and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pastures” (John 10:9). Then, because of the zeal of St. Peter’s confession, Jesus gives him the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” which are a symbol of teaching authority and the gift of discernment, that he and other lovers of God may know the aroma of truth and the foul odor of error: “Thy nose is as the tower of Libanus, that looketh toward Damascus” (Canticle 7:4), which is a beautiful gift and a tall ask, because “Unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48), because with a high understanding of Jesus comes a high responsibility to do or say the greatest, most beautiful, most graceful, and most just act or word of love that one sees at all times: “Thou art beautiful above the sons of men: grace is poured abroad in thy lips: therefore hath God blessed thee for ever” (Psalm 44:3), which is what is indicated by one’s “hands [being] turned and as of gold, full of hyacinths” (Canticle 5:14) and one lips being “as a scarlet lace” (Canticle 4:3). The keys of the kingdom can also refer to the sincerity of the pursuit of spiritual beauty, otherwise known as virtue, for in desiring to make your soul beautiful to God: “Some saying of the temple, that it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts” (Luke 21:5), you possess the key to attain it, for the graces of the sacraments and prayer will give you the grace to be adorned with the beauty you seek: “Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove’s, thy neck as jewels. We will make thee chains of gold, inlaid with silver” (Canticle 1:9-10); “He set in order love in me” (Canticle 2:4). Now, with this teaching authority comes the binding and loosing of sin, which is seen in the entirety of the Catholic priesthood in the sacrament of confession, but there is a preeminent placement on St. Peter, that all may know that Jesus built the Church on the chair of Peter, and whoever is separated from this chair is separated from the Church, and thereby the family of God and the life of grace, for “sin [is] present at the door” (Genesis 4:7), and without the graces contained in the sacraments of the Eucharist and penance, one cannot be saved by grace: “For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8), and therefore, to have one’s sins loosed by Christ’s merciful love in the confessional on a regular, monthly or even weekly, basis is a necessity. Man, being made for love, is thereby made for unity and community, being one but communal like the Trinity, and this is fulfilled in the unified community that is the Catholic Church, with the spiritual family never being without a father: “As you know in what manner, entreating and comforting you, (as a father doth his children,) we testified to every one of you, that you would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12), and thus the papacy is seen to be a beautiful necessity, that the community of love may have one head, that the bond of unity may not be broken. Finally, Jesus tells them not to proclaim that He was Jesus the Christ, because those that heard the message were not ready to hear that He was the cornerstone that He would come to be, for this was to take place after His resurrection, when the love story was complete: “It is consummated” (John 19:30).