Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Here we are on the Catholic Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Apostle. How fitting that we’re also on the precipice of our Church leaders discerning who will be the next man to sit in Peter’s chair, that is, to have the daunting responsibility of leading this fractious international flock. It’s all but a given that Benedict XVI’s successor will be a sitting 
cardinal, and thus will have some idea of what he’s getting into.
Consider, by contrast, Peter’s situation. He correctly states Jesus’s complete identity, and the response he receives is a new name that translates to “rock” and a promise the likely seemed perplexing: “Upon this rock I will build my church.” What did Peter know about building? He was a fisherman, not a carpenter. He was a literalist; consider his comments at the transfiguration. What could this mean, that a church would be built upon him? Perhaps he just shrugged it off as yet another of those things his friend liked to say that made little or no sense.
And yet, when the time came, Peter rose to the occasion. Christ was right; he couldn’t have chosen a more solid, on-fire follower to lead the Church through its challenging early days. And so, as the Holy Spirit descends unto the cardinals, let us pray that the man among them who is called to assume the papacy will be inspired to lead as Peter did—as a shepherd eager and willing to serve as an example to the flock.
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