Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Apostle

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.”

I've noted previously I think how much I like that Jesus re-names Peter.

And I like Peter, generally, a lot, a whole lot, because he seems like such a fuckup so much of the time. He gets scared and can't walk on the water. He wants to stop the Passion even before it begins (earning him the "Get thee behind me, Satan" rebuke). He falls asleep at Gethsemane.

And, of course, he denies Christ three times.

But he does all right in the end. And in today's first reading he says, " Tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly, as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly."