I had just finished my physical therapy session on May 8, 2025, when one of the therapists asked, “So, will this be the day you get your new boss? Who do you predict it will be?” I answered that I had no idea, that the only thing one could say for sure was that the new pope would certainly not be an American. In just a couple of hours, I was again rightly reminded me that I, at least, am not infallible!
Speaking of popes, past as well as present, among the many wonderful things which one can watch on YouTube is a series of videos from the Italian TV coverage of the coronation of Pope Saint John XXIII on November 4, 1958. (TV was still very new then, and that showed in the utterly unself-conscious way the ceremony unfolded and how Italian TV showed it. Unlike then, today it would all be carefully choreographed. Everyone on screen would appear exactly where he is supposed to be, when and only when he is supposed to be there, doing just what he is supposed to do, with nobody else in the TV frame.)
Several times during that ancient ceremony, the Choir chanted Jesus’ words we just heard in today’s Gospel [Matthew 16:13-20]: Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam (“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”). The full Gospel was also chanted, not once but twice – first by a Latin deacon, and then by a Greek deacon. Repetition is basically one way we say: Hey, pay attention. This is important!
Today’s Gospel takes us back in time - from the baroque splendor of Saint Peter’s Basilica and the modern papacy to Peter himself and the region of Caesarea Philippi. Some 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee, Caesarea Philippi was in territory ruled by King Herod’s son Philip - hence its name. It is now known as "Banias," a deformation of its pre-Roman name, referring to the Greek god Pan. In Jesus’ time, there was a pagan temple to Pan at this location at Israel’s northern border at the foot of Mount Hermon.
That border was a lot more peaceful and easier to cross then than now; but it was still a border of sorts, laden with symbolic spiritual significance. Not only was it a Gentile place, but it was also a place probably previously a focus of pre-Israelite Canaanite worship.
It was to that faraway, somewhat pagan place that Jesus took his disciples to ask them the basic Christian question: Who do you say that Jesus is? As befits the prominent role he was being prepared for, Peter answered on behalf of the disciples – on behalf of the entire Church: You are the Christ [that is to say, the Messiah, the Anointed One], the Son of the living God. Not only does Peter proclaim that Jesus is Israel’s hoped-for Messiah, but – in that site sacred to Pan, the son of Zeus – he proclaims Jesus as the Son of the living (that is, the one, only true) God.
Now as then, Peter speaks for the Church – not just for his fellow apostles, but for all of us. In response, Jesus assures us that Peter’s profession of faith was not some mere human opinion, one option among many in the global religious marketplace, but a revelation from God – one which Peter himself, at that stage, still at best only poorly understood. From such a modest beginning in such an oddly out-of-the-way place, Peter’s profession of who Jesus is, has been the center of the Church’s proclamation – as Peter’s role has since likewise remained central to the Church’s identity and mission.
Fast forward to the baroque basilica built above Peter’s tomb, where, for centuries since, Peter has continued to speak - on behalf of the Church for the sake of the whole world. In a Church that right now, as so often in her past, seems sometimes more divided than united, the papal office (and, in our modern media age, the person of the Pope himself) continue to serve as the visible source of the Church’s unity across space and time. Across space, “people of every nation, culture, and tongue” (as we say in the Eucharistic Prayer) are “gathered as one,” so that “in a world torn by strife and discord,” a Universal Church “may stand forth as a sign of oneness and peace.”
Such a unity across space is, in turn, uniquely possible because of the Church’s unity across time - our unity with Peter in his profession of faith in the Christ, the Son of the living God, whose own victory over death has definitively guaranteed that the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against the Church.
The activities of the papacy have changed over the centuries. When I was growing up in the 1950s, no one would have imagined that popes would travel all over the world, which has now become a routine expectation. Nowadays, much papal teaching takes place personally in homilies and General Audiences and, more formally, in encyclical letters addressed to the entire world. One of the most famous papal letters was that of Pope Leo the Great to the Council of Chalcedon in 451, outlining the relationship between the divine and human natures of Christ, to which the assembled bishops supposedly responded: “Peter has spoken to us through Leo.” The external activities of popes change with times and circumstances, all as expressions of the pope’s ministry as the visible source of the Church’s unity across space and time. Our unity across time in professing the ancient apostolic faith of Peter, makes possible our present unity across space as Christ’s Church in our world, which in turn fosters – for both the Church and the world - our future hope for both space and time in the kingdom of heaven. Meanwhile, in our time and place, Peter continues to speak through Leo!
Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, August 23, 2026.
Photo: Statue of Saint Peter, Saint Peter's Basilica, Rome.
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