Furniture is a big-ticket item.  Not only can good furniture be expensive but it can really make a difference in a home.  Walk into anyone’s home and look around.  The way the furniture is arranged communicates something.  A cozy home with nice furniture … what does that tell you about the family that lives there?  A simple home with little or stark furniture says something, too.  How about a home that is an absolute mess, a disaster area, where you cannot even find a place to sit without having to move a pile of junk?  Expensive or cheap; fashionable or frugal; overdone or understated --- furniture is more than just a table or chair; it creates an environment which says something about those who inhabit it.

Today, the attention of the Catholic Church throughout the world is fixed upon the “Chair of Peter.”  The feast we celebrate, however, is hardly about a piece of furniture.  No, rather we join our fellow Catholics everywhere in focusing upon a reality that unites us and brings us together.  The Chair of Peter is more about a person than a place to sit.  Our Gospel of St. Matthew today reminds us of Jesus words to the Chief of the Apostles:

… You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

The Lord Jesus gave to Peter an awesome responsibility not because he earned or deserved it, far from it.  He singled Peter out not because of an extraordinary display of brains or talent --- we often see just the opposite demonstrated in the New Testament.  Peter was chosen by the Lord Jesus not because of his unwavering faith or loyalty --- he denied Christ three times!  Jesus selected Peter because in his divine wisdom, he saw the possibility of greatness.  “Upon you, I WILL build my Church.”  Peter needed more work!  But Jesus had that great gift of seeing in others what no one else could see, of seeing in others what they could not see in themselves.  Jesus knew well the weakness, the flaws, the sinfulness of Peter at the very moment he chose him, this rag-tag, impatient and often impetuous fisherman.  What was more important, however, was what Jesus also knew his grace could accomplish in those he chose if they opened their hearts to him.  He gave Peter “the keys of the kingdom.”  He gave Peter the power and authority to open the doors to paradise with them for mankind through the forgiveness of sin.  He made Peter the solid, rock foundation upon which he build his Church.  It was Jesus’ grace not Peter’s humanity that made all the difference.  And he placed him upon the “Chair” around which the whole environment of the Church would be arranged: its preaching; its teaching; its sacraments; its charity; its power to endure and sanctify unto this present day!

Peter was a man like you and me.  And many other men like you and me have sat in his Chair since that day in Caesarea Philippi that St. Matthew describes in the Gospel, men with names like Gregory and Urban and Innocent and Alexander and Pius and John and Paul and John Paul and Benedict and, now, Francis.  After the heart of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, these men were chosen by God to be Shepherds for us in the Church Jesus built upon Peter.  He promised us in the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah the Prophet “I will give you shepherds after my own heart (Jeremiah: 15)” and he fulfilled that promise again and again and again.

Our first reading today from the First Letter of Peter laid out the agenda for these men, for these shepherds:

Tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly,
as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly.  Do not lord it over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock.

Every bishop since Peter and the Apostles, scattered throughout the world, has a share in that same responsibility.  As your Bishop, with much humility and awareness of my own sinfulness, with fear and trembling at times, but with even greater faith in the power and goodness and grace of God, I turn to you, my brothers to invite you “to be courageous; to be Catholic.”

The world around us has a different message.  Society and the culture in which we live offers lights “contrary to the Gospel” of Jesus Christ and his Church.  Although there is tremendous good in the world, there are also forces that work against the good and those forces never stop and are unrelenting.  They offer us an “easier path” --- an instant path --- to happiness but that path is anything but easy or happy.  Nothing would give them more gratification than to lift up the Chair of Peter and smash it into a thousand pieces, than to destroy the environment that has grown up around that Chair that is the Church and to turn it into absolute chaos.  Why do you believe in God?  Look at all the pain in the world.  What kind of God would allow it?  Why believe in Jesus Christ and his Gospel?  They are myths.  Why profess faith and confidence in the Church?  Look at all the evil it has done, the guilt, the restrictions, the out-of-touch teachings and rules, the abuse?  Why be religious when you can just be spiritual.  I mean, after all, we can just pray in our own way without all the formality and obligations.  Speak truth to power and be free.

I have heard those questions before and so have you.  It takes no courage to ask them.  They aren’t even original.  They are the devil’s work.  It does take courage to answer them with faith, with conviction in the truth that has been handed down from Christ, from Peter.  It does take courage to resist them even when they become louder and more persistent.  It does take courage to respond by saying, “I believe.  I witness.  I am Catholic” and “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”

My brothers, there is power and strength in unity.  We have truth on our side, the truth that is Jesus Christ, his Gospel, his Church.  The Chair of Peter is a sign and symbol of that unity and truth.  Be courageous.  Be Catholic … and “you will receive the unfading crown of glory.”