Get the Keys to the Kingdom

"I will give you the keys"
First Reading: Isaiah 22: 15, 19 – 22; Second Reading: Romans 11: 33 – 36; Gospel Reading: Matthew 16: 13 – 20 August 22nd 1999
What distinguishes Christianity from all the other great world religions is our belief that God became Man. What distinguishes Catholicism from all the other Christian religions is the issue of authority.
Today’s Gospel Reading contains the basis of the Catholic Church’s claim to speak with the authority of Christ Himself: "…you are Peter" (a name which meant rock) "and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven."
In the Greek version of this passage, which is the earliest version we have, the word "you" is clearly in the singular. Jesus was talking to Peter alone, not to all the apostles. However, we know that all the apostles were there, for Jesus had just asked them what the people were saying about Him.
Office would continue
Now the apostles were Jews. From a very early age they had been taught the Old Testament. They would have known the passage contained in this Sunday’s First Reading, in which God "thrust" Shebna from his office as master of the household and replaced him with Eliakim.
"I … will clothe him with your robe and bind your sash on him." God said to Sheba. "I will commit your authority to his hand, and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall close; he shall shut, and no one shall open."
Surely the apostles cannot have missed the similarity between this Old Testament passage and the words of Jesus. Jesus was making Peter "the master of His household." His prime minister, so to speak. Jesus would always be King, but when He returned to Heaven, Peter would speak for Him.
The First Reading shows clearly that the office of prime minister was to be passed on. When Sheba was deposed, the office of prime minister became vacant, but it was not abolished: it was filled by someone else. Shebna’s robe, his sash, and the keys of the kingdom of David were handed on to Eliakm.
There can be no doubt that the apostles understood Jesus’s words in the same sense. When the first apostle, Judas, died, Peter urged the others to elect a successor. He quoted the Psalms, saying: "May another his office take."
Similarly, when Peter died in the year 64 or 67, the Church chose Linus to take his place, followed by Cletus in 76, Clement in 88, etc. (You may recognize these names from the First Eucharistic Prayer.)
Just as "the key of the house of David" was handed on from Sheba to Eliakim in the Old Testament, so "the keys of the kingdom of Heaven" were handed on from Peter to Linus, to Cletus, to Clement, and finally to Pope John Paul II.
Pope John Paul II, therefore, has the keys of the kingdom of Heaven: whatever he binds on earth is bound in Heaven, and whatever he looses on earth is loosed in Heaven. This does not mean, as the media so often suggest, that the Pope is free to make up new laws and abolish old ones. That is why, in 1994, the Pope did not say that he would not permit women priests; rather he said "that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women."
Christ is the King; the Pope is only His prime minister, His vicar (or substitute) on earth. The law came from God, in the Old Testament; Christ said He had come to fulfil it, not to abolish it; the Pope merely interprets it to us in light of Christ’s teachings, both those written in the Bible and those handed down orally from the apostles, who had actually heard.
The necessity for this kind of interpretation is obvious. "Scripture alone" (a guiding principle of the Protestant revolution) is not enough. There are now tens of thousands of Christian denominations, all different, but all claiming to interpret the Bible authentically.
Authority necessary
Some churches, it is true, have given up such claims. A few years ago, the moderator of the United Church of Canada boasted that members of his church were free to believe anything they wanted. Why have a church at all?
Any organization needs an authoritative structure to keep its members in union with each other. Companies, for example, have presidents, chairmen, co-ordinators, etc., who exercise a delegated authority and who in turn are answerable to others. Notice that Christ did not choose the wisest, the most intelligent, or the holiest apostle to be His vicar on earth. After Peter’s declaration that He was "the Messiah, the Son of the living God," Christ replied, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in Heaven." Christ choose Peter because Peter accepted what God had revealed.
It is faith in God that sustains the Church, not human wisdom or intelligence. The Church is therefore not just a human institution, but also a divine institution. It relies on what St. Paul calls "the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God."
Fr. Vincent Hawkswell