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Today's Gospel + short theological explanation
"Primate" of the Pope
Fr. Antoni CAROL i Hostench (Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)Today, Christ asks his disciples about who do people say He is. Among the Apostles, Simon Peter quickly answers, and inspired by God, affirms the divinity of Jesus. The Lord, by expressing himself in the first person, confers on him the "primacy" of the Church: He assigns to him, in a “precise” and “singular” way, the "power of the keys to the Kingdom”.
Jesus established a "community of faith". Its mission is to continue the Salvation through the Sacraments and the preaching of the Word of God. It stands to reason that Jesus Christ decided to bestow a figure to the Church —the Pope— who, with his mission, could steadily guarantee the purity of faith, shielding it from the fashions of times. If then there already were such a diversity of judgments about Jesus Christ, what would happen now, 21 centuries later, if there would not exist the figure of the Pope —Peter’s successor— infallibly assisted by God?
—O Lord, many thanks because You sustain us in the faith through your Vicar, the Pope. Assist him so that he never falters!