ONLY FOLLOWING JESUS LEADS TO THE NEW BROTHERHOOD

Vatican City, 29 June 2012 (VIS) - At 9 a.m. today, Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, Apostles, Benedict XVI concelebrated the Eucharist in the Vatican Basilica with new metropolitan archbishops, upon whom he imposed the pallium. As is customary, a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople also attended the ceremony. The music for the liturgy was provided by the Choir of the Sistine Chapel, as well as by members of the Choir of Westminster Abbey whom the Pope thanked for their participation.

Following the Gospel reading the Pope pronounced his homily, extracts of which are given below:

"Christian tradition has always considered St. Peter and St. Paul to be inseparable: indeed, together, they represent the whole Gospel of Christ. ... Peter and Paul, much as they differ from one another in human terms and notwithstanding the conflicts that arose in their relationship, illustrate a new way of being brothers, lived according to the Gospel, an authentic way made possible by the grace of Christ’s Gospel working within them. Only by following Jesus does one arrive at this new brotherhood: this is the first and fundamental message that today’s solemnity presents to each one of us, the importance of which is mirrored in the pursuit of full communion, so earnestly desired by the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Bishop of Rome, as indeed by all Christians.

"In the passage from St. Matthew’s Gospel that we have just heard, Peter makes his own confession of faith in Jesus, acknowledging Him as Messiah and Son of God. He does so in the name of the other Apostles too. In reply, the Lord reveals to him the mission that He intends to assign to him, that of being the “rock”, the visible foundation on which the entire spiritual edifice of the Church is built. But in what sense is Peter the rock? How is he to exercise this prerogative, which naturally he did not receive for his own sake? The account given by the Evangelist Matthew tells us first of all that the acknowledgement of Jesus’ identity made by Simon in the name of the Twelve did not come “through flesh and blood”, that is, through his human capacities, but through a particular revelation from God the Father. By contrast, immediately afterwards, as Jesus foretells His passion, death and resurrection, Simon Peter reacts on the basis of “flesh and blood”: he “began to rebuke him, saying, this shall never happen to you”. And Jesus in turn replied: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me”. The disciple who, through God’s gift, was able to become a solid rock, here shows himself for what he is in his human weakness: a stone along the path, a stone on which men can stumble".

"Here we see the tension that exists between the gift that comes from the Lord and human capacities; and in this scene between Jesus and Simon Peter we see anticipated in some sense the drama of the history of the papacy itself, characterised by the joint presence of these two elements: on the one hand, because of the light and the strength that come from on high, the papacy constitutes the foundation of the Church during its pilgrimage through history; on the other hand, across the centuries, human weakness is also evident, which can only be transformed through openness to God’s action.

"And in today’s Gospel there emerges powerfully the clear promise made by Jesus: “the gates of the underworld”, that is, the forces of evil, will not prevail. ... Peter will have to be defended from the “gates of the underworld”, from the destructive power of evil. Jeremiah receives a promise that affects him as a person and his prophetic ministry; Peter receives assurances concerning the future of the Church, the new community founded by Jesus Christ, which extends to all of history, far beyond the personal existence of Peter himself.

"Let us move on now to the symbol of the keys, which we heard about in the Gospel. ... The key represents authority over the house of David. And in the Gospel there is another saying of Jesus addressed to the scribes and the Pharisees, whom the Lord reproaches for shutting off the kingdom of heaven from people. This saying also helps us to understand the promise made to Peter: to him, inasmuch as he is the faithful steward of Christ’s message, it belongs to open the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven, and to judge whether to admit or to refuse. Hence the two images - that of the keys and that of binding and loosing - express similar meanings which reinforce one another. ... The parallelism “on earth ... in the heavens” guarantees that Peter’s decisions in the exercise of this ecclesial function are valid in the eyes of God".

"The authority of loosing and binding consists in the power to remit sins. And this grace, which defuses the powers of chaos and evil, is at the heart of the Church’s mystery and ministry. The Church is not a community of the perfect, but a community of sinners, obliged to recognise their need for God’s love, their need to be purified through the Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ sayings concerning the authority of Peter and the Apostles make it clear that God’s power is love, the love that shines forth from Calvary".

"The iconographic tradition represents St. Paul with a sword, and we know that this was the instrument with which he was killed. Yet as we read the writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles, we discover that the image of the sword refers to his entire mission of evangelisation. ... This was certainly not the battle of a military commander but that of a herald of the Word of God, faithful to Christ and to His Church, to which he gave himself completely. And that is why the Lord gave him the crown of glory and placed him, together with Peter, as a pillar in the spiritual edifice of the Church.

"Dear Metropolitan Archbishops, the pallium that I have conferred on you will always remind you that you have been constituted in and for the great mystery of communion that is the Church, the spiritual edifice built upon Christ as the cornerstone, while in its earthly and historical dimension, it is built on the rock of Peter. Inspired by this conviction, we know that together we are all cooperators of the truth, which as we know is one and “symphonic”, and requires from each of us and from our communities a constant commitment to conversion to the one Lord in the grace of the one Spirit".