Rock Faith

St Peter, Our Lady of the Assumption, Swynnerton, Staffordshire, May 2019

‘As our Lord built the house of his life upon the foundation of faith in the Divine Love, so he could only build the house of his Church on the foundation of faith in himself. When Peter by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost cried, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’, our Lord felt that he had found the rock faith on which he could begin to build.
 
If we consider the three typical names by which our Lord called his apostles – Simon, Peter, and Satan – Simon may stand for the natural man, Peter for the redeemed man, and Satan for the rebellious man. All of us are in our first natural beginning Simon, born into this world with natural desires and the power of choice. But right at our birth the Church of Christ meets and puts us into the supernatural order by baptism; and as our minds develop and our wills become more definitely our own, there is presented to us more and more clearly the Gospel and the Person of Christ, that we may make our personal choice. All of us who have felt the spell of his beauty have cried out at some time, ‘Thou art the Christ!’ and so passed from the state of Simon to the state of Peter. Each one of us has to make that confession of faith. But when we have made that personal acceptance of our Lord, then we have to learn the lesson of the Cross, and to accept him as the crucified, suffering Messiah, taking up our cross for his sake, that we may not fall into condemnation and merit the rebuke of the name of Satan, the Adversary’.
 
Father Andrew SDC, 1869-1946

O God, who hast hallowed this day by the martyrdom of thine Apostles Peter and Paul: grant unto thy Church, in all things, to follow the precepts of those through whom she received the beginning of religion; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.