HOMILIES PREACHED BY FATHER ALTIER ON THE FEAST OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL

Then the very important thing that we must all keep in mind is the point Saint Paul makes towards the end of the reading we heard today, because no matter what happens in our lives, remember that everything is part of God's Providence - everything. It does not matter how good or bad it may seem, every little minute detail and every huge event are all part of God's Providence. Saint Paul tells us: "The Lord will continue to rescue me from all attempts to do me harm, and will bring me safe to His heavenly kingdom." If we just simply trust that, imagine what God could do through us if we trust that God is right there by our side.

Friday June 29, 2001

Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Reading I (Acts 12:1-11)

Reading II ( 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18)

Gospel (St. Matthew 16:13-19)

As we celebrate these two great saints today, Peter and Paul, the Church gives to us these readings that make it clear that all the extraordinary things they did, the life they lived, and the preaching task was done through them by the Lord. We hear, for instance, of Saint Peter in prison and how the angel of the Lord comes to Peter and frees him from the prison so he can go out and continue to preach. We hear Saint Paul talking about how he has been poured out like a libation and the time of his dissolution is near. But then he tells us: "The Lord has stood by my side and He has strengthened me so that the preaching task might be completed and all the nations might hear the Gospel." Then the very important thing that we must all keep in mind is the point Saint Paul makes towards the end of the reading we heard today, because no matter what happens in our lives, remember that everything is part of God's Providence - everything. It does not matter how good or bad it may seem, every little minute detail and every huge event are all part of God's Providence. Saint Paul tells us: "The Lord will continue to rescue me from all attempts to do me harm, and will bring me safe to His heavenly kingdom." If we just simply trust that, imagine what God could do through us if we trust that God is right there by our side.

Now, considering that, look at what happened to Peter. He wound up in prison. God did not keep him from prison. Look at what happened to him at the end of his life: He got crucified upside down. It is not like God kept them from any kind of suffering. Saint Paul says, "I have already been and I am being poured out like a libation." And the time of his dissolution was near. God, standing right by his side, was continuing to say, "You need to pour yourself out." It is not this idea that "God is at my side! I can sit back in a La-Z-Boy™ and have a great, wonderful, easy, and fun life. I can just sit back, watch TV, and sip on iced tea. God is right here by my side and I've got it made!" That is not the way it works. With God at our side, He is going to say, "You need to do My Will. You need to do My work. You need to pour yourself out. You need to give."

We do not just want Him by our side - we want Him inside. If He is going to be inside, it means we have to pour everything out so we can be filled with Christ. Then the Lord can say to us, as He did to Peter, "Blessed are you Simon, son of John. No mere man has revealed this to you but My Father in Heaven." The revelation is that Jesus is the Son of God and He is the Messiah. Once we understand that, once we allow that into the depths of our being and that becomes the center point of our lives, then we realize we cannot just sit back and do nothing. If we really, truly believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He is the Savior of the world, we need to act, we need to do something with that. We need to change our lives, we need to get out, and we need to live it. We need to bring that message to others.

That is why Saint Paul was poured out. That is why Saint Peter gave and gave and gave as the shepherd to whom Jesus entrusted His flock to feed them and care for them. The same will be true of us. Maybe we do not have to go traveling across the lands and preach, but we need to live it. We need to bring that message to others by what we do and what we say. That is what the Lord is asking of us. If He is with us, we need to let Him live in us and through us, to shine through us so that people will hear His voice when we speak. People will see Him when they see the works that we do and they will give glory to His Heavenly Father.

Note:Father Altier does not write his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Sunday June 29, 2003

Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

Reading I (Acts 12:1-11)

Reading II (2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18)

Gospel (St. Matthew 16:13-19)

In the Gospel reading today, Jesus takes His disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi is a city way in the north of Israel. It is stationed at the foot of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon is the place where the Jordan River begins. The snow on the top of the mountain melts and goes down through the crevices in the mountain underground and then comes up in hundreds and hundreds of little springs. But there is one particular spring there that is gushing and goes right underneath a cave. That place where Jesus took His disciples was also a pagan shrine. There is a huge cliff that is right there along the mountain, and the pagans had carved lots of niches into this cliff that was there. They had all their statues of their little false gods, and people would come from all over the place to be able to pay homage to their false gods.

And so in this place with many false gods, Jesus brings His disciples and asks them, “Who do you say that I am?” First, He asks, “Who do people say that I am?” and then asks His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” He brings them to this place to ask that question because the answer is really going to be precisely what occurs at that place. The answer was “Some people say you are John the Baptist, others Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” In other words, they did not recognize that He was God, but maybe they thought He was some sort of a false god just like all the statues in the niches that were there. Then He asks them, “But who do you say that I am?” And when Peter comes out with the truth and says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus proclaims him blessed and tells Peter that he did not understand this on his own, but rather he had received this revelation from God our heavenly Father.

What Jesus then tells Peter is very important. He says to him, “You are rock – You are Peter – and on this rock I will build My Church, and the jaws of hell will not prevail against it.” Now in order to understand that, we have to keep in mind that, first of all, there is only one person in the Old Testament who is ever called a rock. It is not the average name that we would give to our kids. Cephas is the Hebrew, Petra is the Greek, and that is where we get the name Peter from, but it means “a rock”. There is only one person in the Old Testament who is ever called a rock, and that is God. In the New Testament, other than Peter there is only one person, and that is Jesus. He is called the stumbling stone; He is called the cornerstone; He is called the capstone. And then there is Peter.

When we look at Peter elsewhere, we see that he is also a shepherd. Jesus tells Peter to feed His sheep and tend His lambs and so on. But Jesus, we are told, is the Good Shepherd. Peter also is given the keys to the kingdom of Heaven. The keys are the symbol of the prime minister, the man who would run the day-to-day life of the kingdom. Jesus is the King, in fact, King of kings and Lord of lords. But to Peter He has entrusted a share in that office of running the kingdom, the Church, the kingdom of God on earth. And so we see then that God is the Shepherd, God is the King, God is the Rock; but Peter is given a share in all three of these offices. Peter, needless to say, is not God. He proved that rather well on several occasions, if there was any question that anybody had. But the Lord gives him a share in His own work and in His own offices, giving to Peter a share in the very authority of the Lord Himself, so much so, and so clear that it is God Who is going to work through this man, that God makes Himself obedient to a human being. Consider that. He says to Peter, “Whatever you hold bound on earth will be held bound in Heaven, and whatever you declare loosed on earth will be declared loosed in Heaven.” God makes Himself obedient to a man, which makes it pretty evident that it is not Peter operating on his own; but rather, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter is going to be led in the decisions that he makes. The office of the prime minister is also one of succession, which is why we have an unbroken chain of succession from Peter to John Paul II.

But to get back to the point about the question and the importance of what Peter had said, Jesus then follows up by saying that the jaws of hell (or the gates of hell) will not prevail against the Church. As I mentioned earlier, there is a cave that is right there, a natural cave right in this cliff at Caesarea Philippi. In the time of Jesus, the cave had no floor. It does now because of an earthquake that filled it in, but at the time of Jesus there was no floor in this cave. There was rushing water, thousands of gallons of water per minute rushing through the floor of the cave. The ancients had tried to plumb the depths of the cave and could never find the bottom. Several people had fallen into the water and were never seen again. Therefore, the ancient people believed that this cave was the mouth of hell; it was the jaw of the netherworld; it was the place where there was no bottom. Right in front of the cave, about 10 or 20 yards, is a huge boulder about 10 feet in diameter, and if one stands back across from where the Jordan River comes out, it looks like the cave is a huge mouth that is about to devour this rock that is right in front of it. So as you look at it, the cave is to your left and all these little false shrines are to your right, and there is Jesus telling us very clearly that everything that is false is not of Him and that the devil seems to get along very well with all of the little false gods but the jaws of hell are only doing battle against one, and that is the rock that is right in front of the mouth of the cave.

Now it is interesting even in that context to look at the other two readings that we have: Peter, who is thrown into prison, and we are told that the gates opened all by themselves; and Paul telling us that he was saved from the mouth of the lion so that he could preach the Gospel. We see even on the natural level the way that this statement of Jesus is fulfilled in the lives of His saints, that the gates and the jaws do not prevail against His Church, even though both Peter and Paul were ultimately martyred. In Saint John’s Gospel, when Jesus told Peter how he was going to be martyred, Saint John makes the statement that Jesus said this to tell Peter the means by which he would glorify God in his death. And so it was not that the jaws of hell finally prevailed against Peter, but rather it was the ultimate act of love and it was Peter’s ultimate triumph over the powers of hell. The same is true of Saint Paul, who tells us that it was now the time for his departure. He had been poured out as a libation; there was nothing left. He had run the race, he had fought the fight, he had kept the faith.

Many non-Catholics like to look at that passage and the passage that follows immediately after with Saint Paul telling us that what awaits him now is a crown of righteousness that the Lord will give to him. They say, “See! Saint Paul knew that he was going to be saved.” At the time of his death Saint Paul knew he was going to be saved. If you look at his Letter to the Philippians in Chapter 3, Saint Paul says, “I pummel my body lest after having preached to others I myself might be lost.” Saint Paul was not running around confident of his salvation, but rather it is Saint Paul himself who says, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling.” That does not sound like a man who says, “As long as you believe that Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior you’re in! You can do anything you want; you’re going straight to Heaven!” Saint Paul would be the first to condemn such an idea. But by the end of his life, after he had been stoned, beaten, whipped, shipwrecked, and all kinds of other things that he lays out for us in 2 Corinthians, then he can say that he has kept the faith, he has fought the fight, he has run the race. He was faithful to the Lord.

When we look at our own selves, we have to admit that many Catholics have been badly, badly affected by this Protestant idea that as long as you believe in Jesus there is no suffering. “Jesus did it all for you. As long as you believe in Jesus, the only reason you would suffer is because God is angry at you. You must have sinned; you must have done something really bad for God to be so angry that you would have to suffer.” Now I simply point out to you our two saints for today and ask the simple question: Is glorifying God in one’s death because God is angry at you? Is being thrown in prison and having an angel sent to release you (only after he had been there for a while and it was the day before trial – it is not that Peter was thrown into prison and minutes later God released him) because God is angry at you? I do not think so. This is the same Peter who tells us that we should rejoice whenever we suffer because it helps our faith to grow. Peter did not say, “If you’re suffering, it’s because God hates you.” Rather, it is because God loves you.

What God promised even to His Church was not “As long as you are the Church that I have founded, the new people of God, the new Israel, you are free from all suffering because I am the foundation of this Church.” No, all that He promised the Church is that the jaws of hell would not prevail. He did not say that the Church would not suffer or would not be persecuted. In fact, He told us precisely and explicitly that that would happen. “If they hate you it is because they hated Me first. Men will persecute you, they will manhandle you, and they will drag you into court. Rejoice on that day.” That is what we have to be doing. Saint Peter himself tells us that when we suffer for doing what is right it is then that the Holy Spirit in His fullness has descended upon us.

The Church is Jesus Christ and the Church will be crucified. The Church must undergo the Passion and the death in order to enter into the Resurrection. We, as members of the Church, have to share in the Passion and death of Our Lord as well. We must understand that is what is required of us. It is not optional for a Christian person whether or not they want to suffer. If you can look at Jesus Christ when He asks you the question that He asked Saint Peter – “Who do you say that I am?” – if you can respond, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” then not only does Jesus pronounce you blessed but He is going to give to you a share in His own life, in His own suffering, in His own death. It is by this means that you will glorify Him, and with Saint Paul we will be able to say, “God has stood by me through all of the sufferings.”

God will not abandon you. It feels like it sometimes. Jesus, from the Cross, even intoned Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” God never abandoned Him; He was God. How could God abandon Himself? But it feels that way. That is when our faith is being tested, and that is when we have to rise to the challenge. Not alone, because we cannot, but with the help of God, with the grace of God, Who stands by us through every suffering and every trial to free us so that we will be able to continue to proclaim the Gospel by our words and by our actions.

When we consider the two saints whom we celebrate today, that is the example that they give to us. It is also the teaching that they give to us very clearly in their letters, Saint Paul even stating in one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture: “I make up in my body for what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church.” This is not a man who thought that suffering was a punishment from God, but a man who recognized that suffering was the means by which we will glorify God. The Lord looks at each one of us today, and, in the midst of our neopagan society with all the false gods that are being held up before us, He says, “Who do people say that I am?” We can say, “Some people say that you’re a nice guy. Some people say that you’re a prophet. Some people say that you are an ascended master. Some say you are a guru.” “And you,” He will say, “who do you say that I am?” The answer that you give to Jesus Christ is the answer that will define your life. Consider your answer. Consider what it means for you, and then with your whole heart and soul and strength answer Him clearly: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Saints Peter and Paul, Witnesses to the Gospel

Tuesday June 29, 2004

Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

Reading I (Acts 12:1-11)

Reading II (2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18)

Gospel (St. Matthew 16:13-19)

In the Gospel reading today, we hear about Our Lord asking His disciples about who people say that He is. When Peter is able to respond with the fullness of truth, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God, not only does Jesus bless him and found His Church upon him, but it also sets up (not only for Peter, but for the other apostles) the entire understanding of what it was that they were going to have to do. That is to say, if one truly believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God then that means we are going to have to be completely united with Him in everything that He is about. And so we see in both Peter and Paul that they spent their lives doing exactly what Jesus did. They went out and they preached the Gospel. Both of them met with a martyr’s death; both of them have been glorified in Heaven for eternity.

Now we see some of the extraordinary things that took place like the angel coming down and freeing Peter from prison. We know the various miracles that happened with Saint Paul and the different things that occurred. Yet, at the same time, we have to be able to look and see how even though these extraordinary things happened, they also, through these same things, were sharing in the Lord’s Passion. Peter was thrown into prison and he was kept there in chains with sixteen soldiers all around, and he was there for days. It is not like he was arrested and the Lord freed him immediately, but rather he was thrown into this prison where he had to sit through the entire time of the Passover and was not released until the very night before he was supposed to go on trial. Saint Paul says, in the reading that we heard from the Second Letter to Timothy, that his life has been poured out like a libation. There is not anything left; he has emptied the jar. If we look at what he says about himself when he writes to the Corinthians, he talks about how he has been whipped and beaten and stoned and shipwrecked and so on. They did not live easy lives. They shared in the Lord’s Passion. They suffered for what it was that they believed. And it is precisely for this reason that Saint Paul, now at the end of his life, is able to say, All that awaits me now is the crown of righteousness. He knew that the Lord, the just Judge, would give that to him, but he says, Not only to me, but all who have hoped in Him.

So for us, then, that question comes right back. Who do you say that I am? If we want to be like a lot of people who claim that they believe in Jesus, we are going to say, “You’re the Savior,” meaning, “You’re going to save me from all suffering.” It does not make sense considering the suffering He endured. Some might say, “Well, because I believe that You are the Son of God, You are going to give me everything that I want. I can be rich, and I don’t have to worry about any problems because I believe in Jesus.” It does not work that way either. All we need to do is look at the lives of the apostles; every last one of them except Saint John was martyred, and they tried a few times with him and it did not work so they finally just threw him out on Patmos until he died. So it is not going to be an easy life if we are going to follow Christ.

If we are really going to make that act of faith in Who He is then we have to understand that we have been incorporated into Him, He is going to live His life through us, and therefore we are going to be the ones today who bring the Gospel out to others. Not necessarily in the missionary way that Saints Peter and Paul did, as well as the other apostles, but each one of us is a missionary in our own right. We have to bring Christ into the workplace. We have to bring Him into the neighborhoods. We have to bring Him into our day-to-day lives. We are going to be persecuted for it, and we all know that. We need to learn to praise God for that. Remember the apostles when they were arrested and whipped; they rejoiced that they were found worthy to suffer on behalf of the Name. They did not complain – “I thought if I believed in You that I wouldn’t have to suffer!” – just the opposite: They rejoiced that they were found worthy to suffer!

And if we are going to truly believe in Christ, the way that this world is going – thanks be to God!– we might be martyred. What a gift if that were the case! Our Holy Father has made that very clear as well: There is going to be a new springtime and this will not happen without the blood of martyrs, he says. He knows what is coming. We would be fools if we tried to ignore the mess the world is in and think that we can be good Catholics in this world and not suffer for it. So the time is upon us to live our faith, and by simply living it we are going to evangelize, by speaking to others about Christ and bringing Him into the world, and by being willing in our own lives to share in the Cross of Christ. As Saint Paul says to Timothy: to share in the burden which the Gospel entails. All of us have that upon us, and all of us need to be able to see that this is a gift. It is not something to be shunned or run away from. It is something to be able to recognize that if we have been found worthy to share in the Passion of Christ there is no greater gift anywhere because the only thing greater is what lies on the other side, the merited crown of righteousness that awaits those who have suffered with Christ, who have put their faith into practice, who have lived a life of hope, and who now in love for God await the fullness of life. That is what the apostles did, that is what is held out for each one of us, but the first thing that needs to be answered is the simple question – Who do you say that I am? – because the way you answer that question is going to set the tone for the rest of your life.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Wednesday June 29, 2005

Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

Reading I (Acts 12:1-11)

Reading II (2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18)

Gospel (St. Matthew 16:13-19)

In the Gospel reading today, we hear this very famous passage from Matthew 16 as Jesus brings His disciples up to Caesarea Philippi to the headwaters of the Jordan River, which was also a place of pagan worship. In the cliff that is right there, there are niches built in where the pagans had all their little shrines, statues of their little gods and goddesses, all along the way. So Jesus brings them to this place with all of these little gods (a Pantheon, if you will) and says, Who do you say that the Son of Man is? “Am I one of these little gods, or am I God?” Peter is the one who speaks up and says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus blesses him.

Now the question is: Who do we say that He is? When we look at Peter and Paul, as we celebrate their feast today, we see Saint Peter being thrown into prison in the first reading. The angel of the Lord comes and frees him from prison and brings him back out into the city. We see Paul telling us that God has rescued him from the mouth of the lion, and God will continue, he says, to rescue him from every evil threat and bring him safely to His heavenly kingdom. We also know that Peter was crucified and Paul was decapitated. “If this is the case,” we might ask, “Why didn’t God protect them?” He did. God brought them safely to His heavenly kingdom, and it was precisely through their martyrdom that they gave God the greatest glory. Even though they preached the Gospel all around the known world at the time, what gave God more glory even than that was that they were willing to lay down their lives for Him. They knew that He was God. They made their profession of faith that He was God. And they trusted. Indeed, God had freed them so that they could do the work He had set them aside to do. But when the final moment of their life came, they still had to make the same act of faith. Who do you say that the Son of Man is? They still believed and professed that faith to the very end of their lives and professed it now with their blood. And God freed them. He did not free them from the fact that they would suffer martyrdom, but He freed them from the shackles that held them bound to this world so they could be free for eternity.

So now we ask the question: Who do you say that the Son of Man is? If you say, as you look at all the little false gods that this world has to offer, “You’re just like anybody else,” then of what sense is it? But if we can say with Peter, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, then the question that I would ask is: Then why don’t we trust Him? Why don’t we trust Him? Because the reality is that in most of our lives we do not. We profess that He is God, but we do not really trust Him. At which point, we really have to ask: Then what do we believe? We want to be sprung from prison – notice that Peter had to sit there until the very night before His trial. God did not keep him from going to prison, nor did He spring him immediately. Paul, remember, was whipped, beaten, stoned, and shipwrecked. God freed him from all the trials but did not free him from ever having to undergo them. Finally, as we have already seen, both of them endured martyrdom, their last and greatest act of witness to Christ. Should we expect it will be any different for us? Saint Paul, at the end of his life, says that he has fought the fight, he has run the race, and he has kept the faith. Will we be able to say the same? Would we be able to say with Saint Paul, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat”?

Will we trust Him? Will we really believe and live that act of faith that we make? Who do you say that the Son of Man is? Be careful of your answer, because once that answer comes forth, you must live your life in accordance with the answer that you give. And we know what the answer is. With Peter, we need to say, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

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