Pastor's Note from Fr. Szparagowski 📝 - [August 23rd Bulletin]

Dear St. Philip Neri Family and Friends,

We give praise and thanks to God for His graces and blessings!

It is hard to imagine that God would entrust the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven to a human being—to one of His own creatures. Yet that is exactly what Jesus does in today’s Gospel. He gives the keys to Peter and says,

“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”

Why Peter? Peter was not perfect. He was not always courageous. He did not always understand what Jesus was asking of him. He would sometimes speak before he thought. He would sometimes get things wrong. And, most painfully, during the Passion of Christ, Peter would deny Jesus three times and walk away from Him.

Yet Jesus chose Peter. The reason we see in today’s Gospel is that Peter opened his heart to God. When Jesus asked,

“Who do you say that I am?”

Peter did not simply give an answer that he had learned from someone else. He proclaimed what God had revealed to his heart:

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Peter recognized who Jesus truly was, the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus tells him that this faith did not come from Peter alone. It was the Father who revealed it to him.

What a beautiful lesson for us. God can do extraordinary things through an ordinary human heart when that heart is open to Him. Jesus takes Peter’s faith and makes it the foundation of His Church. He gives him the keys to the Kingdom. He gives him the authority to bind and to loose, to forgive and to retain sins. Upon this rock, Jesus says, He will build His Church.

And then Jesus gives us a tremendous promise:

“The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”

Think about that for a moment. The Church does not rest upon the perfection of human beings. It rests upon Christ and upon the faith that Christ establishes in His Church. The Church has survived persecution, division, suffering, scandals, wars, and every kind of difficulty throughout the centuries. Why? Because the Church belongs to Christ.

Peter becomes the visible rock upon which Christ builds. This is why we need to remain close to Peter. We need to remain close to the faith of Peter and to the Church that Christ established through him.

Because, in many ways, we are like Peter. We can say the right thing one day and the wrong thing the next. We can have great faith one moment and great fear the next. We can promise the Lord that we will always follow Him, and then find ourselves turning away when things become difficult.

Peter did exactly that. At the Passion, Peter was afraid. He denied that he even knew Jesus. The man who had just proclaimed Him to be the Son of the living God now stood at a distance and denied Him.

But Peter did not remain there. After the Resurrection, Jesus went looking for Peter. And Jesus did not say, Peter, you failed Me. You are finished. I can no longer use you. Instead, Jesus forgave him. Jesus restored him.

The same Peter who had fallen becomes the shepherd of Christ’s Church.

The keys were given to Peter, but the invitation is given to all of us: Keep your heart open to God. What began with one human heart opened to God became the foundation of the Church for generations to come. And perhaps that is the challenge for us today: What can God do through our hearts if we truly open them to Him?

So, let us stay close to Peter. Let us stay close to the Church. Let us stay close to Christ.

I pray for you every day, especially at Mass. Please pray for me.

Please invite someone to Mass today.

St. Philip Neri, pray for us.

Have a blessed week,

Fr. Szparagowski