Upon This Rock

“You are Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church.” Matthew 16:18

What a tempest in a teapot this one verse has provoked. There cannot be two truths, or three, much less hundreds of truths. What is the rock upon which Jesus built His Church? Would it not be best to go back to what the first Christians believed? After all, that truth was what was passed on to them by the apostles and the leaders who came after them. This truth is built on the teachings of the Councils of the Church, the Church Fathers, the Scriptures, and the Apostles—guided by the Holy Spirit.

In 1 Timothy 3:15, Saint Paul writes, “But, if I am delayed, you should know the manner in which it is necessary to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and the foundation of truth.” The CHURCH is the foundation of the truth, before even the Scriptures were written. 

John Chrysostom, an Eastern bishop and honored as a saint in many Christian churches, taught that Peter was the universal teacher of the universal Church. “Why did Christ shed His blood? That He might obtain possession of those very sheep, WHICH HE ENTRUSTED TO PETER, AND TO HIS SUCCESSORS.” In this document, “The Priesthood”, Chrysostom recognised the primacy of Peter in the see of Rome and the continued primacy entrusted to Peter’s successors, all of whom were commanded to follow and obey the one shepherd.

In a homily, Chrysostom said that “Peter himself, the chief of the Apostles, the first in the Church, the friend of Christ, who received a revelation not from man, . . . THIS VERY PETER,‑‑AND WHEN I NAME PETER, I NAME THAT UNBROKEN ROCK, THAT FIRM FOUNDATION, the great Apostle, the first of the disciples...”. 

Origen, an early Christian scholar who wrote more than 2,000 treatises on theology and founded the first school for Christian pastors, wrote in one of his commentaries: “Peter, upon whom is built the Church of Christ, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, left only one Epistle of acknowledged genuinity.” 

There is so much wealth to be found in homilies, and writings of the Church Fathers and the Saints where they proclaim that Peter is the rock and the one to whom was entrusted the government of the Church. 

Father, thank You for guiding Your Church for all time, and for entrusting Your truth to Your Church.