[00:00] I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. All that the Church has is from Christ, and it belongs to Christ. The Church itself is Christ's Church.

[00:35] When our Lord speaks to Peter, I think it's good to see that emphasis. Our Lord says, "Yes, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build," but the Church that I will build is my Church. It's good to put this emphasis on those words of our Lord, "my Church," because it reminds us that on its own, the Church really has no power. St. Peter, though he was the first pope, really had no power of his own.

[01:07] In fact, left to himself, he very quickly denied our Lord and failed in his duty to confirm his brethren in the faith. So it's not because of a power that Peter has that our Lord makes him the head of the Church. It's not because the Church is strong that Jesus picks it. No, the Church is really nothing on its own, and neither is Peter. It's Christ that gives it power. So the shepherds in the Church, including priests, so bishops and priests, they are

[01:45] invested with a real power and a real authority that comes from Christ. We owe them our respect, our obedience, but we must remember that it's not anything of their own that we revere, that we respect, or that we even obey. It's the power that Christ has given to them. I say this because, like I was mentioning, the defects and the failings of bishops and priests. I'm a priest.

[02:16] They're very, very visible to the faithful and can be very, very discouraging. It would be great if all of us priests were just great saints, like Padre Pio and St. Maximilian Kolbe, but that's not the case, and it would be great if all the popes and bishops were just saints and doctors of the Church, but it's not the case. But it doesn't change that the Church belongs to Christ. It's His Church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Two things that I wanted to mention on this point, actually three, one I already did.

[02:52] So on the one hand, it's okay to notice the shortcomings of priests and bishops. Why is it okay? Because we can't hide them. I wish I could, but I can't, so it's okay to notice them. They're really there, and Jesus, too, knew the shortcomings of St. Peter and of all the apostles. He knew them very well. They couldn't hide them, neither can we, and then two more things, but if we lose focus

[03:22] on the fact that the Church is Christ's Church, we can succumb to this erroneous way of thinking, a human way of thinking that whether the Church can or cannot withstand the attacks of hell depends on who's in charge, on who's the pope, on who's the bishop, on who's the priest at this parish. It doesn't depend on that. Our Lord says the gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church, not Peter's Church,

[03:56] not Paul's Church, but my Church. So it's not up to any one individual pope, let's just think of the pope, just an easy reference point because we referenced today St. Peter. It's not this pope or that pope that guarantees the victory of the Church. It is Christ, Christ alone. If it's a good pope in the sense of a holy pope who fulfills his mission, well, he will make the ride very smooth for the boat, and that's great.

[04:29] If it's a pope who is less faithful, and we've had those in history, in fact, maybe the majority have been in this category of the so-called bad popes. If it's a bad pope, he's going to make the ride very rough and very unpleasant. Either way, the boat's not going to sink because it's Christ's Church. Bad captain, okay, it's going to be a rough ride. Will the boat sink? No. Is it going to be pleasant for the passengers? No, but it won't sink, and in fact, Pope Francis has a quote that emphasizes exactly this.

[05:07] He's commenting the little boat tossed by the stormy waves of the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night. This is an effective image of the Church, he says, a boat which must brave the storms and sometimes seems on the point of capsizing, but what saves her is not the skill and courage of her crew members, but faith in Christ, which allows her to walk even in the dark amid hardships. What saves her is not the skill and courage of the crew members, but faith in Christ.

[05:46] The crew members, if they're skilled, okay, they're going to make the ride smooth and that's great, but if they're not, it's going to be rough, but the boat still won't sink. And then one more thing. We can forget sometimes that no one pope alone is Peter. The current Holy Father, Pope Leo, who we're blessed with, is the pope. He is a successor of Peter, but every pope before him continues to be a teacher and a

[06:17] shepherd for the Church. The Catechism says that we follow a living magisterium, so even the dead popes continue to teach us. The magisterium is living, and everything that is taught by a council or a pope today has to be reconciled with and made to agree with everything that came before.

[06:48] So the pope of today, his teaching has to be in continuity with and understood in continuity with the 266 popes that came before him. And the Second Vatican Council, the 21st, has to be read in continuity with the 20 councils that came before it. No one pope, no one council is above the rest and trumps the rest. We have a living magisterium, which must always be interpreted in continuity with all the magisterium that came before it.

[07:21] It goes for Vatican II, Vatican I, Trent, every council before it. So we're not the Church of Pope St. John Paul II, we're not the Church of Pope Benedict or Pope Francis or Pope Leo, we're Christ's Church. We're not the Church of Trent, we're not the Church of Vatican I, we're not the Church of Vatican II, we're Christ's Church, which has had all these councils, which has had all these popes, which has a living magisterium.

[07:53] It's important to keep that in mind. So let's lift up our hearts before we, as we draw to a conclusion. We have to have confidence in the Church, why? Because it is Christ's Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That's why we have confidence in the Church, that's why we love the Church, that's why we stay in the Church, that's why we actually win souls for the Church. Even in the darkest moments of Church history, the saints always sought to gain new members

[08:30] for the Church, even if the ride was very rough, because it's within this Church that we find salvation and not outside of it. Even if the ride is very, very rough, it's still better on the boat than in the water. And our Lord speaks of the gates of hell, and this is an interesting, interesting way of phrasing his promise, the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church. The gates are usually associated with a defensive structure.

[09:06] Gates are defensive measures. So I think we can, in this promise, read our Lord telling the Church that it is to go on the offensive, so the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. So hell is on the defensive, the Church is on the offensive, the gates of hell shall not prevail. The Church should be going on the offensive, winning new members for the Church, winning new souls for Christ.

[09:39] If we go on the offensive, the gates of hell shall not prevail, and in every moment we should be in this missionary offensive mode, so to speak, gaining ground, gaining territory. One last quote. A while ago I discovered this book by a mid-20th century theologian, Frank Sheed, who was a prolific writer with a sense of humor. And he wrote in the 1970s, which was a difficult time, and for many reasons, part of the reason was just modernity was exploding, like a pimple, you know, just like all the ugliness

[10:15] of a pimple exploding, and we're still living that. So he lived in a time of great confusion within the Church because of what the men of the Church were doing, and he had to deal with it, he had to cope with it, he had to see the weaknesses of the men of the Church, and yet have confidence in the promise of Christ. So he says very, somewhat humorous, but very enlightening words, he says, in the criticisms uttered by many, there is the same failure to see Christ as the whole point.

[10:50] So many people back then were criticizing the Church as if the survival of the Church depended on the pope or the bishops, or as if the survival of the Church depended on how clamorous or how angry the faithful got about what they saw. It doesn't. There's the failure in this way of thinking to see Christ as the whole point. And we, individually, don't protect the Church from the gates of hell.

[11:21] It's Christ's promise that gives us that assurance. So he says, we are not baptized into the hierarchy, we do not receive the cardinals sacramentally, we will not spend eternity in the beatific vision of the pope, Christ is the point. We join the Church, not because, wow, the bishops now are so holy, I want to be a part of the structure, I want to receive the sacraments because the cardinals are so great, or I want

[11:53] to be a Catholic so I can get to see the pope for all eternity. Hopefully we will see all the previous popes for all eternity, hopefully they all became saints. But that's not the point. Christ is the point. And he reminds us, this theologian, Frank Sheed, even under, let's say, the worst administration, say as bad as John XII, a thousand years ago, we could still learn Christ's truth, receive his life in the sacraments, be in union with him to the limit of our willingness. Why? Because Christ is the point, and always will be.

[12:26] And concluding with the beginning statement, the preliminary statement, which also becomes a conclusion, in the Church we see lots and lots of fruits of grace, so much so that we almost categorize it into the subconscious, we expect that, and it doesn't surprise us, and it's there. When we see the bad, of course, it doesn't belong there, it gets our attention, it gets us upset. We can't hide the bad in the Church and our priests and us, weaknesses of the bishops,

[12:58] they are there. But that's not why we have confidence in the Church. We have confidence in the Church because it's Christ's Church, and he has promised it victory. And he has said that it's the place of salvation. It's the place of victory. It's His Church, His battle, His victory. That's why, again, we should love the Church, win souls for the Church, always stay faithfully in the Church, sure that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. May His peace be Jesus and Mary.

[13:30] Amen. Amen.