For Pete's Sake!

Many of our Station Churches are off the beaten track, or at least off the track I've beaten thus far. So this has been a great opportunity to see beautiful churches that I probably wouldn't have caught in forty Lents, or a month of Sundays, whichever comes later.

Saturday's Station Church was a little wayside chapel known as San Pietro in Vaticano--some guy named Benedict is there, and apparently it's named for an early martyr of the church buried there--came originally from Jerusalem, evidently.

It was nice. It was a bit longer walk from the sacristy to the altar, because the place is really sprawling--nobody seems to be keen on installing moving walkways or some kind of tram system, though.

It is the scale that is stunning about Saint Peter's--everything is built in superlatives. Designed by the Who's Who of Renaissance architects, it is today not only the largest church in the world, but at 18 million visitors annually, it is also the most visited Christian site, after the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

















In this photo it is difficult to make out the pen (not ball point) in John's hand in the circular mosaic on the ceiling . . . but the pen alone is longer than a grown (possibly also groaning) man.



To ask why the pauper's tomb of a foreign fisherman is such a focal point today of course is to delve into the Catholic understanding of identity and origin. This church set on Vatican hill rises above the body of the leader of the Twelve, a visible echo of the words of Jesus to Simon in Matthew 16:18: "You are rock, and on this rock I will build my church" (or the loose translation--Jesus to Simon: "You rock!"). Kephas (Aramaic for Rock, or Petros, as the Greek transcribes it) becomes the name by which Simon is known, and his new identity from Christ reflects how each of us is called to a new identity, being transfigured in Christ as members of his living body.

St. Peter follows Jesus' mandate ("Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." Matt 28:19-20) and after leaving Jerusalem for Antioch, comes to Rome where he is willing to give testimony to Christ by shedding his blood (which started a trend that continued in his successors through 258, when Sixtus the II was beheaded). Jesus' command to teach is reflected in the name of the Apostles' successors today, known as the Magisterium, from the Latin, 'magister', or teacher.