← Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
6/29/25 Pillar and Foundation: Upon this Rock
00:19:40
Homily from the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. Jesus came to establish a Church. The Church is an essential part of God's Kingdom on earth. Jesus is the King. Peter (and his successors) are the stewards of the King. This role has the authority to teach, guide, and govern.
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Welcome to Sunday Homilies with me, Fr. Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the One who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up@ascensionpress.com Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless the Lord be with you and with your spirit. A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Matthew Glory to you, o Lord. Chapter 16, verses 13 through 19 When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of man is? They replied, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets, he said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter said in reply, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus said to him in reply, blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so 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. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ I want you to have a seat. So we've been following this, doing the series called Pillar and Foundation, and one of the things we've been trying to respond to is this challenge. The challenge is the question people have, or the question is, okay, so is that in the Bible or is that just from the church? As if, again, we've talked about this for the last six weeks, as if the church is optional. I want to make a claim, and I think this claim is bold, but I think this claim is accurate. And it is this, that in spite of what people have said for the last maybe 100 years, maybe 50 years, where they contrast the idea between religion and relationship, right? That Jesus didn't come to establish a religion, he came to give us a relationship. I would say that the reason why Jesus came to this earth was to give us the church. That's the reason. The reason Jesus came to this earth was to give us the church. Right. He unlocked the gates of heaven. Yes, absolutely. That he gave us access to the Father. Yes. He brought us into a new covenant. Absolutely he did all those things. And those things have been communicated to us. How they've been communicated to us through the church. I mean, stop just one second and meditate on this. That Jesus. Yes. In saving us from our sins. Yes. Jesus in again, opening the gates of heaven. Jesus in making it possible for us to have access to God, give us the Holy Spirit. How was that actually communicated to us? All of that, all of that grace, all of that new relationship that God gave us, all of it came to us through the church. So again, I'll make this claim. The church is not optional. The church is essential because the church is the whole point of Jesus mission to earth. So here's what I mean. In 1990, something, there's a rabbi, Rabbi Jacob Neusner. Rabbi Jacob Neusner. He wanted to ask the question. The question was, okay, so I'm a 21st century rabbi. If I was living at the time of Jesus, if I was a first century rabbi living in Israel, would I have believed that Jesus was the Messiah? Because he realized he was just being very, very honest. He said, I know that there's 2000 years of baggage right now. And so, but what if I was there 2,000 years ago and I saw this rabbi who was doing the things that Jesus did, fulfilling all these Old Testament prophecies, Would I follow after him? And so he wrote this book documenting his honest look at would I have become a follower of Jesus? And it's really pretty remarkable because he says, yeah, you know, actually Jesus fulfills all of these Old Testament prophecies, prophecies of what the Messiah would do, who the Messiah would be. Ultimately, though, Rabbi Nusner says that he doesn't believe he would have followed Jesus for essentially one reason. That one reason is he said the Messiah was supposed to restore the kingdom to earth and where's the kingdom of Israel? That Jesus didn't actually establish the kingdom on the earth, therefore he couldn't possibly be the Messiah. All the other things lined up. He fulfills all these other prophecies, but this one he doesn't in Rabbi Neisner's perspective. And so he just says, I couldn't have followed Jesus. Now it's interesting. Pope Benedict XVI was Cardinal Ratzinger at the time. He said he just really admired Rabbi Neusner's honesty and his deep dive into looking at the claims of Jesus. The future Pope Benedict made the argument. He said, actually Jesus did establish a kingdom. Jesus did reconstitute the kingdom of Israel, we call that. And that kingdom has gone out throughout the whole World that kingdom has embraced, just like Scripture prophesied, that kingdom has embraced all languages, all nationalities, all races. That kingdom has embraced the entire world. And that kingdom is the Catholic Church. If you actually want to take a look at what the Bible says about this, I would do this. I would say, let's look back at the Old Testament. Here's God who establishes his kingdom, right? Kingdom of Israel. And it is made up of how many tribes? 12. 12. Wow, scholars. 12 tribes of Israel, right? They're constituted under one king originally. We have King Saul, kind of, sort of. Then it's King David. Boom. Establishes this. There's King Solomon and then Solomon's son. Under King Solomon's son, those 12 tribes fracture into 10 tribes in the north and two tribes in the south. Unfortunately, as years go on, there's never a reunification of those 10 tribes and those two tribes. In fact, unfortunately, what happens is with those 10 tribes in the north, the Assyrians come in from the north, and they obliterate those 10 tribes from the face of the earth. They're gone. They have never been seen again. They will never be seen again. And that if you. If you look at the map of Israel, what you see is that right up there by the Sea of Galilee, just north of the Sea of Galilee, it's what's called the land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali. Those two are two of the tribes. Zebulun and Naphtali become the two tribes. There's a little history lesson. The first two tribes that the Assyrians decimate and destroy. But the promise of God was what the promise of God was. There will be a kingdom that would last forever. So where is it? Well, if you go to Matthew's Gospel, the very first chapter, Matthew's Gospel. I remember when I first got my first Bible in high school, I was at the Crowing county fair, and they gave me a little Gideon New Testament with the Psalms and Proverbs. And I remember reading, oh, my gosh, I'm gonna read the Bible. And the first book in that Bible, that little small one, is the Gospel of Matthew. So I crack open Matthew, chapter one, and I begin reading the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Then it goes on to say, Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Keeps going on. I was, wow, this is riveting reading. Not. It is. I was so bored. I didn't realize what was happening. What Matthew is doing is he's saying, oh, no, no, no, listen. Here's Abraham at the beginning here. Then it goes all the way to David, and then from David it goes all the way to Jesus. What Matthew is doing is Matthew's establishing a direct connection from the tribe of Judah through David to Jesus. Why? Because Matthew's whole gospel is making the case that Jesus established the kingdom and that he is the king. So if you keep going, you keep reading, in the Gospel of Matthew you get to Matthew chapter four. In Matthew chapter four, there's a strange thing that happens. John the Baptist unfortunately gets killed. And Jesus leaves the region of the Jordan river, leaves the desert and he goes north to the Sea of Galilee. He's walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And then Matthew even puts this quote in. He says, Jesus went to Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been said through the prophet might be fulfilled. Land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. The weight of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. People who sit in darkness have seen a great light. So Jesus knows this time is happening. And before he does any public ministry, he goes to the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. Why? His land of Zebulun was where those 12 tribes, those 10 tribes of the north were first destroyed. He has come to restore the 12 tribes. Where does he start this? Capernaum by the sea, Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali. And then his first words, public words are this. From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Matthew makes it very, very clear that Jesus whole mission was to what? To establish a kingdom, AKA to establish a church. The very next thing he does after this, the very next verse says, as he's walking by the Sea of Galilee, he sees two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea. They're fishermen. He says to them, come after me and I'll make you fishers of men. Gets James and John, he gets four. How many total does he get? 12. Exactly. He gets 12 total. Why? Because Jesus is the king. He's reconstituting the kingdom of, of Israel. And all along, every beat and almost virtually every gospel is maintaining this absolute truth that Jesus is establishing a kingdom and he is the king. Until we get to today's gospel. Today's gospel is Matthew chapter 16. So I don't know if you know this, if you're Looking at a map of Israel, Jesus spends roughly 80% of his public ministry in a five mile radius. This just blows their mind. The most influential, significant person who ever lived spends 80% of his public ministry, his public work, within a five mile radius. But at one point here In Matthew chapter 16, we just heard today, it says Jesus when his disciples took the apostles, right? Well, they went up to a place called Caesarea Philippi, about 29 miles north of where Jesus home base was, about 29 miles north of Capernaum. He's like, why would Jesus walk 29 miles north? Because north is uphill and everything. Why would he go that far? And he asked them one question. We heard the question today in the Gospel. The question is, who do people say the Son of man is? All these answers, and this is a great example, great snapshot of what we have right now. I mean, anybody could go down to Barnes and Noble and they could pick up a Bible or go to Amazon and order a Bible. They could read it and they could come to a bunch of different conclusions about who Jesus is. So Jesus asked, what are people saying? Well, Elijah, John the Baptist, one of the prophets, Jeremiah. And then Jesus asks, who do you say that I am? And Peter, apparently revealed to him by the Father, says, you're the Christ. What's Christ? That means the Messiah. That means the anointed one. Peter is saying, jesus, you're the king. In response to Simon Peter saying, jesus, you're the king. Jesus says, what? Jesus says, simon, your name's no longer Simon. Your name is now Peter. Now I don't know if you know this. Up to this point, the name Peter wasn't a name. Did you know this? Do you know that up until like 1984, the name Madison didn't actually exist as a first name. It was. There's a movie, this is a side point. There's a movie starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah called Splash and where Daryl Hannah plays a mermaid and she gets legs and she meets Tom Hanks. Because they're walking downtown Manhattan and she wants a name and she points up in Madison Avenue, she says, how about that? And he says, in the movie that's not really a name, but okay, ever since then, every girl named Madison is named after a fish. They're named after the mermaid, Daryl Hannah in Splash. Anyways, just like this is why, this is why this matters. Because the Bible, up until this moment In Matthew, chapter 16, the name Peter wasn't a name. It literally just means rock. In Aramaic it would be the word kepha. That's all it is. So Peter is. Jesus is saying to Simon, okay, from now on, your name is Rock. Why? For the same reason that Jesus took all the disciples up to this place called Caesarea Philippi. If you ever have a chance to go to Caesarea Philippi, you will see this remarkable rock formation. It's this massive, massive cliff hundreds of feet high. And built into this massive rock at the time of Jesus were all of these temples, essentially all of these churches. So Jesus didn't have PowerPoint. So what he did was, okay, so since you're not PowerPoint, you have to walk 29 miles north. And at this place, I will say, oh, no, no, Simon, your name is now Rock. And you see these churches built on this rock behind me, Peter, on this rock, you. I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. This is a massive moment. You know, in the Bible, only God can change someone's name. And when he changes their name, he also changes their mission. He changes their identity, he changes their role in this moment. Simon goes from another one of the disciples, another one of the apostles, to being unique. What's that unique role? What's in the next line? He says, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Remember the keys. The king of the kingdom. I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What you open, no one shall shut. What you shut, no one shall open. When you bind on earth, bound in heaven, loose on earth is loose in heaven. Now we hear that, like, wow, that seems like a big, big deal. If you're one of the disciples, you'd have been like, oh, my gosh, Jesus is referencing Isaiah 22. You wouldn't have known that because it didn't number Isaiah until, like, later on. But you'd been like, he's referencing that first third of Isaiah. And you'd be absolutely right, because in the first third of Isaiah, there's this. There's this moment where here is a guy named Eliakim, and Eliakim is the Al Habait, right? He's the prime minister of the king kingdom. The alhabayit was this Al. It means over ha is the and bet or bayt is house. So this is the person over the house. This is basically the prime minister of the kingdom. Now, the king is the kingdom. The king is the king of the kingdom, but the Al Habait is the prime minister. Which means what? That means when the king is away, the Al Habait has the authority of the king. It's much like what you'd think. If you ever know Lord of the Rings. If you have, you have Gondor, right? The king of Gondor is Aragorn. While Aragorn is gone, you have the steward of Gondor, who has all the authority of the king. But he's not the king. And so, as Jesus is saying, I'll give you the keys to the kingdom which you bind on earth, bound in heaven, loose on earth, is loose in heaven. Those disciples who knew the Bible would have said, oh, my gosh. Isaiah 22. Because in Isaiah 22, here's what it says. It says, I will give you. Because he's giving it from Eliakim and giving it to a guy named Shebna. He says, I will. I will clothe him with your robe and gird him with your sash. That sash, that robe is a sign of authority and confer on him your authority. He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. He'll be a father to the members of the kingdom. You know when it comes to. You know what we call the pope? Pope, because pope is the English or Anglicized version of the Italian papa, which is father. We call the pope the Holy Father. Why? Because Isaiah 22, he'll be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And here's the kicker. Here's the line. I will place the key of the house of David on his shoulder. What he opens, no one shall shut. What he shuts, no one shall open. I shall fix him as a peg in a firm place and a seat of honor for his ancestral house. On him shall hang all the glory of his Father's house. When Jesus is saying to Simon, okay, now you're the rock upon which I will build my church, remember why? Jesus come to Earth to build a church, to establish a church. And then he says to Simon the rock, now, Peter, I will give you the keys. What he's saying is, you're right, I am the Messiah. You're right. I am the king. And now you have a new role. Your new role is to be the Al Habait. To be the one who's over the household. That when I'm gone, you have a job to do. Now, we might think like, yeah, but the next line he says is, get behind me, Satan. That's a challenge, but it does take away his role. You also think, well, yeah, but also, Peter was false to Jesus. That doesn't take away his role. In fact, there's this one. There's one section of the Gospel of Luke, this one. I kind of want to end here. The section of the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22 is just fascinating. It's Jesus at the Last Supper. At the Last Supper, what happens is a number of the disciples picture this. It's Luke 22. It says, Then an argument. Jesus had just done the Last Supper. He had just foretold his betrayal. And the next line in Isaiah 22, verse 24 says, then an argument broke out among them about which of them should be regarded as the greatest, which is just like, so inappropriate. Jesus just gave them the Eucharist. He also just said that, basically, yep, I'm going to be betrayed. Well, who's the greatest? And then Jesus takes this opportunity to once again remind them about servant leadership. He says, among you, it shall not be so. Rather, let the greatest among you be as the youngest, the leader, as the servant. He goes on to say in verse 28, he says, it is you who have stood by me in my trials, and I have conferred a kingdom on you, just as my Father has conferred one on me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on the thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. Jesus makes it so clear. I'm establishing a kingdom. And he will sit on the thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. And the very next line he says is, he turns to Simon Peter and he says these words. He says, simon Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat. It's plural. He's demanded to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, singular. I prayed for you, Peter, that your own faith may not fail. And once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers. Pause for a moment on this. Jesus has just said, yep, you all have authority in my kingdom. You all have authority. These are the first apostles, these are the first bishops. And then he says, and Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift all of you. All of you Apostles like wheat. But Simon Peter, I have prayed specifically for you, that after you've fallen, that your own faith may not fail. That after you come back to me, after denying me, after you come back, you may strengthen your brethren. What is the context of this? Jesus has just said, the greatest must be the least. The greatest must be the one who serves. And he now said to Simon Peter, Simon Peter, remember, your role as the Al Habait is not to lord it over anyone, but to be the servants of the servants of God. You know the Pope's role. Pope's title? Yes. Holy Father. Yeah, it's the Holy Pontiff. The Pope's title has always been the servant of the servants. Here is Jesus knowing that Peter himself is a broken and wounded and weak man, but he has a job to do that when he has fallen, his own faith doesn't fail and he can come back and strengthen his brethren. This is the great gift, one of the great gifts that God has given us. He has given us the Holy Father. He's given us the role of Pope, Right? He's given us, as it says in Isaiah 22, that sure peg fixed in a solid place. And we know that if we stay close to the Holy Father, we are staying close to the Church. And we know this, the Church is not optional. That Jesus Christ came to this earth to establish a kingdom. Jesus came to this earth to give us the Church, and the Church he gave us. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is, as scripture says, the pillar and foundation of truth.