"You Are Christ ... You Are Peter"

 

 

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. (Hence, the temporary prohibition on telling anyone.) 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.

No War, No Peace

 

Historically, the slogan "No War, No Peace" refers back to Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), the Bolshevik leader of the Soviet negotiating team, trying at Breat-Litovsk in early 1918 to end the war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Refusing to accede to Imperial Germany's severe territorial demands, Trotsky simply announced on February 10, 1918, that the Russian war was over and that the Soviets would cease active fighting. Trotsky's Bolshevik boss, Vladimir Lenin, initially went along with the "No War, No Peace" approach. After Germany resumed its military advance, however, Lenin pragmatically insisted that the Russian negotiators immediately agree to sign the treaty accepting Germany's harsh terms. So much for "No War, No Peace" as a strategic policy!

It is a very imperfect analogy, of course, but "No War, No Peace" is not an altogether inadequate description of the present impasse in the misbegotten war between the U.S. and Iran. Whatever the slogan's strategic limitations, Trotsky's "No War, No Peace" was at least a  policy of sorts. On the other hand, it is hard - on any given day - to divine what U.S. policy regarding Iran actually is, or indeed what the state of the conflict actually is. Are we negotiating? If so, with whom? Are we threatening "prompt and utter destruction" (as the world War II allies famously threatened Japan at Potsdam)? If so, with whom? Are we doing both at the same time? Or something else? Who knows? How would one know? 

Like so much of what the U.S. has done (or failed to do) in this war, Trotsky's "No War, No Peace" was an ad hoc adjustment to an uncontrollable reality. In fairness to Trotsky, however, the war was not one which the Bolsheviks had started, although, of course, they had benefited enormously from its traumatic effects on Russia. The Revolution had inherited the war from the Tsarist Regime, which shared responsibility for that colossal failure of European civilization with the other belligerent Powers on both sides. In contrast, the Iran War is entirely the result of U.S. decisions, a wholly self-induced foreign-policy debacle.

According to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's Regime Change (Simon and Schuster, 2026), the Administration's previous attack on Iran - the June 2025 "Operation Midnight Hammer" - began with Mass offered in the Vice President's office, attended by the Secretary of State and the White House Chief of Staff, who later said it was "to pray for the people." One wonders whether any comparable prayers were offered the following February when the current war was being launched?

All of which, of course, brings us back to the original mistake, the misbegotten character of the conflict, displayed in the problematic decision-making recently described so poignantly, for example, in Haberman and Swan's same riveting account and which continues to bedevil the U.S. today. It is widely alleged that the Administration would like just to be able to quit the war somehow. One is reminded of October 1966, when Senator George Aiken of Vermont famously suggested that the United States should just unilaterally declare that it had won the Vietnam War, using this "victory" as an excuse to de-escalate American involvement in Vietnam. But unilaterally declaring "victory," would not open the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians just don't seem to want to cooperate with American face-saving - unsurprisingly, given their long history of malevolent anti-Americanism and their past success at humiliating American presidents. Meanwhile, the war continues to take a terrible toll on the world economy, on American military resources, and on our on-site personnel (as evidenced by the recent revelations about conditions on the American aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which themselves highlight the defective nature of American war planning). 

Perhaps, prayers really are what the situation calls for. But divine intervention to bail us out - what the ancients called a Deus ex machina -  cannot be counted on. At the end of The Odyssey (Homer's, not Nolan's modernized version), when Odysseus and his rivals seemed stuck in a pattern of further fighting that threatened almost unending civil conflict in Ithaka, Athena herself intervened. She "cried with her clarion voice and forced the whole host to stop," and Zeus reinforced her intervention with a decisive thunderbolt. Odysseus "obeyed, his heart rejoicing. They were made to swear oaths to each other, to endure for all time to come" (tr. Daniel Mandelsohn, U. of Chicago Pr., 2025, 530, 545-546).

Would a clarion call to "Stop," backed by a thunderbolt or two make a difference in this war? Actually, one might suggest that more than a few such thunderbolts have metaphorically already been hurled as warnings both before and during this conflict, to little or no avail. So, on it goes, "No War, No peace." 

Photo: Leon Trotsky and his fellow Bolshevik negotiators arriving and meeting their German counterparts at Brest-Litovsk station on January 15, 1918.

Blessed Be Her Glorious Assumption - Even on Saturday

 

"To day is the holy day of the Assumption of the dear blessed Mary other of our Lord and Saviour Jesus. Oh may I be found worthy of her regard and love." So wrote the then 24-year old Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker in his Diary on August 15, 1844, exactly two weeks after his entry into the Catholic Church.

La Madonna di mezz'agosto was how my Sicilian grandmother used to refer to today's festival of the Assumption (typically termed, as in the Divine Praises, the "Glorious" Assumption) of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has been celebrated on this same date for so many centuries.

Unfortunately, in the United States this year, because it falls on a Saturday, the Assumption is not being kept as a holy day of obligation, for reasons which may seem inexplicable at best and (like so many other contemporary religious mistakes) may also seem self-destructive in terms of the Church's visible and public presence in people's lives today.

In contrast, early on in American history the Assumption received special attention and solemnity in the newly created the United States as the patronal feast of Baltimore, the first U.S. diocese (then encompassing the entire territory of the new country). In his first pastoral letter to his extensive American diocese, Bishop John Carroll called on all U.S. Catholics to celebrate the feast: "to unite with one heart, and in one earnest supplication to the father of all mercies, and the giver of every good gift, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, that he may be graciously pleased to preserve, increase, and diffuse a sincere and well-grounded attachment to the principles of our holy religion; to advert from us the seduction of error and pestilential infidelity; to awaken and renew in us the spirit of solid piety, and of watchfulness over your unruly passions; to animate us to the fulfilling of all the commandments; to pour down on our country blessings spiritual and temporal; and to receive our grateful and humble thanks for the innumerable favors, which we continually receive from a Bountiful Providence." 

Certainly, Saturday or not, that remains a worthy prayer agenda for this happy feast in our own troubled time as well!

Early traditions saw Mary's death (her "Dormition") as an extraordinary event. It is thought that traditions about Mary's Dormition and her accompanying Assumption can be traced as far back as the second century. Whatever may be inferred from those ancient narratives, Eastern Orthodox Christians affirm that, after Mary had died a natural death, her final resurrection was anticipated and she was carried completely, body as well as soul, into the glory of heaven. Accordingly, they celebrate the Dormition of Theotokos on August 15, preceded by a strict 14-day fast. Roman Catholics regrettably abandoned virtually all remnants of the ancient ascetic Christian practice of fasting decades ago.  That said,  we likewise also affirm faith in Mary's body-and-soul assumption and also celebrate it on this same ancient date. (Catholic teaching, now formally dogmatically defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950, leaves it an open question whether Mary actually died and was then raised up to heaven or whether she was directly assumed into heaven without having died first.)

In 1946, Pope Pius XII, in a letter to the world's bishops Deiparae Virginis Mariae, asked them:

"Do you, venerable brethren, in your outstanding wisdom and prudence, judge that the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith? Do you, with your clergy and people, desire it?" To this inquiry, the Pope received an unsurprisingly resounding response, which he characterized as "outstanding agreement of the Catholic prelates and the faithful." This showed, the Pope claimed, "the concordant teaching of the Church's ordinary doctrinal authority and the concordant faith of the Christian people which the same doctrinal authority sustains and directs" (Munificentissimus Deus, 12). 

Those were the days! Try to imagine such concordance in today's conflict-ridden factionalized world! Try to reimagine today the missionary self-confidence and future-oriented hopefulness expressed in that Holy Year of 1950 in the papal bull defining the by-then fully accepted Catholic doctrine!

Preaching at the Sixth National Marian Congress of France in July 1950, the Papal Nuncio to France, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (the future Pope Saint John XXIII) composed this prayer:

O Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother too! We hail you with this cry that all generations repeat, contemplating the mysteries of your life and the splendor of your Assumption. Once more we hail you as blessed, beata; intercede for us, O glorious Queen of the world and be ever mindful of us, particularly in the dangers and needs of the present hour.

Photo: The Crowning of Mary, Queen of Heaven, Mural by Willian Lauren Harris, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.

To watch a video (with commentary in french) of the proclamation fo the assumption by Pope Pius XII in 1950, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AKESyTZZM8.

Theo - A Kris Kringle for our Dispirited Age

 

Every Christmastime, I rewatch Miracle on 34th Street. Originally, however, that famous film was released in summer and was not initially presented as a Christmas movie. To me, how a film that features Santa Claus could not be a Christmas movie defies all explanation! That said, Santa Claus aside, Miracle on 34th Street is a movie about how someone who personifies goodness brings joy to other people's lives and gets them to do good things that they probably ought to have had enough sense to do on their own, but never would have. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (Atria Books, 2025) has a similar feel (minus the Christmas context), highlighting classically human themes of friendship and kindness, mutual service, and responding to the sadness and loneliness so endemic in modern American life.

Allen Levi originally self-published his novel through Amazon in the fall of 2023, but the book really took off in 2025 and has since became a huge success, finding its way onto the New York Times "Bestsellers" list for weeks. The story follows "Theo" - an 86-year-old Portuguese-born man, who uses only his first name - through his eventful year as a visitor residing in a Southern Georgia town called Golden. Theo focuses much of the year buying up portraits of local residents. The portraits had been done by a local artist named Asher. Theo sees them hanging on display (and for sale) in a local coffee shop called The Chalice. Theo's plan in purchasing the portraits himself is to give them as gifts to their subjects. First, Theo sends the portrait’s subjects a handwritten letter on fine paper, inviting them to come to the prearranged meeting place, promising that he’s “a harmless old man, a widower, a father, a toothless lion with only innocent intentions.” For the most part, the recipients of the portraits and the other locals whom Theo befriends respond positively to his generosity and prove to be grateful for an opportunity to tell Theo their story.

Much of the novel is about the unique network of generosity and mutual friendship which Theo creates, and how most of the others in downtown Golden respond to his initiatives. The author supposedly turned down offers from a Christian publisher for Theo of Golden. Even so, this is a novel permeated with a Christian sensibility, with occasional references to both Christian beliefs (e.g. heaven) and practices (e.g. Sunday churchgoing).  The novel’s conclusion features a Christian funeral service that includes an edifying homily on the story of the Risen Christ's encounter with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. (Since Theo is Portuguese his religious background would presumably have been Catholic. The local church, however, although the minister is a Father Lundy, looks somewhat generically, non-denominationally Christian.)

If the novel has a particular weakness, it is that the conclusion which ties everyone and everything together appears a bit too contrived, which (to my mind) may actually diminish the gratuity of Theo's kindness. The book could also have been a little tighter (i.e. shorter), the main point having been made and remade multiple times. (Rare is the book that couldn't benefit from being shorter!) That said, it is a beautiful story that highlights hope for humanity and prioritizes authentic Christian values in this time when such contrary values seem to predominate in our culture and in our politics.

As Father Lunday says: "For a year, he was in our midst and now, looking back, can't we say that, when we were with him, our hearts burned within us, our souls stood on tiptoe, our eyes recognized something good and true, and our minds could believe, if not fully, then ever so slightly, that love and heaven and forgiveness are the most real things that we can know in this world?"

Rome's Third Patron

 

Quam clarificata est Jerosolyma Stephano, tam illustris fieret Roma Laurentio ("As Jerusalem is made glorious by Stephen, so Rome is made illustrious by Lawrence"). So said Saint Leo the Great preaching on today's feast of the great Roman deacon-martyr Lawrence. Back in 2012, during my time at "Saints School" in Rome, I got to visit three Roman churches named for Saint Lawrence - San Lorenzo in Lucina, San Lorenzo in Panisperna (honoring the site of Lawrence's martyrdom), and the great Basilica of Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls, where Lawrence is buried. (The Photo above is of the altar at the site of his burial).

 

Christian Rome produced many martyrs - among them Pope Sixtus II and four other Roman deacons, whose memory we commemorated at Mass just last Friday, who were martyred just four days before Lawrence in 258 during the persecution of Emperor Valerian. 

What made Lawrence stand out so?

 

As deacon, Lawrence was apparently in charge of the material possessions of the Roman Church and of its alms for the poor. According to tradition, after the execution of Pope Sixtus the Prefect demanded that Lawrence turn over the Church's treasure. Supposedly, Lawrence quickly distributed as much of the Church's property as possible to the poor and then went to the Prefect and presented to him the poor. "Behold in these poor," Lawrence said to the Prefect, "the treasures I promised to show you." 

In the late 20th century, it became quite common to talk about a "preferential option for the poor." Lawrence lived it. Hence his standout status in 3rd-century Rome - and a good reason why we remember (and hopefully imitate) him even today.

Homily for the feast of Saint Lawrence, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, August 10, 2026.