You Are Peter

Lawrence OP / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

It's the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter and Pope Benedict has one week left until he hands in those keys.

Meanwhile, in Rome, St Peter's Basilica is ablaze with light, especially around the Altar of the Chair beneath the Glory of Bernini. Today's feast celebrates not a piece of furniture, but a teaching position: a "Chair" in the same sense that the university system uses to this day. Peter's Chair is not endowed with a financial grant, but with the Spirit's seal of infallibility--even if this is, strictly speaking, limited to some very specific conditions.

In celebrating the Chair of St. Peter, we thank the Lord for giving his Church a consistently reliable teaching authority: one that unites us around Peter to unite  us visibly around Jesus Christ, the "author and perfecter" of the faith that Peter preserves in his name.