Reflecting on the Papal Vist - 15

High above the "Altar of the Chair" is Bernini's artistic conceptualization of the Chair of St. Peter in St. Peter's in Rome.

On a radio talk show last week I heard a caller say of the pope: "He thinks he's God - and he's not!"

While not trying to read Benedict's mind, I'm confident that he doesn't think he's God. Nor does he think he's Jesus. What our Church does teach is that he's the Vicar of Christ. I wrote about this in an earlier post:

Catholics understand the pope to be Christ's Vicar on earth. From the Latin vicarius, vicar means "one who acts in the person of." The pope's ministry is to act and speak in the person of Christ among us. That is also the bishop's ministry in the diocese and the pastor's ministry in the parish. By virtue of our baptism, each of us is missioned to act and speak in the person of Christ in our daily lives. But the pope deserves a capital V on his title - not because of who he is personally but because of the office that is his. Thus, his words and deeds have a special claim on our attention as Catholic Christians.

What is this "office" that Benedict holds that puts such a serious claim on our attention?

While the pope does not believe he's God or Jesus, he does believe, as the Church teaches, that he is Peter among us, the people of God. The pope's ministry is often called the Petrine ministry since he is first among equals in the college of bishops as Peter was first among equals in the circle of apostles gathered around Christ. (After Christ's name, the name Peter is the one most frequently mentioned in the Christian scriptures.)

It will remain only a curiosity for many, but in the ecclesiology of Catholicism, the bishop of Rome is the successor not of Jesus but of Peter. In this way, it was Peter who came to visit the Church in America last week.

While I'm familiar with all of this, I'm trying to think it through again as I ponder the impact of Benedict's visit. Who was this 81-year-old man in strange costume, from mitered head to red-toed shoes, who won the hearts of Americans both in and outside the ranks of Catholics? Although it waited until Benedict was back in Rome for nearly two days, even The Boston Globe editorialized (4/22/08) positively about the papal visit. Morrissey Boulevard opines that the pope:

...connected with Americans of many faiths through his simple preaching and pastoral work. Whether addressing diplomats at the United Nations or praying with victims of clergy sexual abuse in a Washington chapel, he took exquisite care to uphold the dignity of every person... it was Benedict who advanced healing in shaken parishes from coast to coast by expressing the church's deep shame and contrition... It's not every visitor who stays less than a week and leaves his hosts thinking about a kingdom of justice and peace.

Benedict's preaching was simple or, as I described it, eminently accessible. And the pastoral work accomplished through his words, presence, encounters and gestures was capped by his prayerful, positive and appreciative tone, even when about the business of critiquing and challenging us and our culture.

As accessible as his speeches were, they managed to communicate volumes more than their relative brevity might suggest. In fact, his talks and homilies provided a series of pastoral plans for the Church's ministry in America nationally and parochially. As poignant and personal as his encounter with the abuse victims was, there was something about it that was larger than life. It was so much more than a man, even a very important man, meeting with five of his flock. Who was this man? What makes his words and deeds so powerful? There is a dynamic here that exponentially raises simple moments to the level of critically important events and there is the intuition of millions of people that there is in this man something more than the man himself. Although only people of faith, perhaps only people of the Catholic faith might name it as such, the energy here is not simply that of Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger, but rather the energy of Peter, of the office of Peter, of that long line of ministers called pontifex maximus and servus servorum Dei: greatest bridge-builder and servant of the servants of God.

It's not just the man, or his vestments, or the cadre of cardinals trailing him everywhere he goes. It's the understanding that somehow this man connects us (builds a bridge) across some 2,000 years of history back to Peter: the man upon whom Christ promised to build his church; the man who thrice denied the Lord in Jesus' hours of greatest need; the man commissioned by Christ to "feed my lambs, feed my sheep." It was precisely the pope's coming among us as one who desiring to build bridges and to serve the servants of God that won our hearts over - not to him- but to something greater, larger, deeper than him.

You see, that's the thing here! What we experienced last week was greater, far greater than the sum of its parts. In Catholic theology we call that a symbol. A symbol is a word-event that gathers together in itself and shares of itself more than the word and event could possibly hold within itself. In that sense, the papal visit was sacramental: an outward sign, a gift of Christ, through which God's people received grace and blessing.

If The Boston Globe can, if only for a day, lay aside its animus towards the Church and acknowledge a gift of grace when it pours forth in a message upholding the dignity of every person in a kingdom of justice and peace, can anything less be expected of us Catholics?

-ConcordPastor

(Post on Pope as Peter)