- bility, Peter and his successors, when they speak to the
whole Church on matters of faith or morals, will be preserved from teaching what is false.
But Peter is to be not the foundation only, but the Governor and Head of the Church. Therefore, as the governor of a city has the keys put into his hands, so has Peter received full power over the Church to give orders and make laws as he shall see fit. And Christ, the invisible Head of the Church, promises to confirm in Heaven the acts of His Vicar on earth.
Moreover, as the Church is not to pass away with Peter, but to last as long as the world, what is promised to Peter is promised to his successors to the end of time.
Now that through their spokesman the Apostles had confessed their faith in our Lord's Divinity, He began to show them that sin requires expiation, and that this can be made only by suffering. Gently and gradually He broke it to them that He would have to redeem the world by bitter pains and a cruel death, but that He would rise again the third day. "And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the ancients and by the high priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again."
They were horrified. It was so different from what they had expected. Why, it was only the other day that He was nearly being made King! To be the Messiah and to suffer! To be the Son of the Living God and to be killed! It was more than Peter, with his faith in our Lord's Divinity, his reverence, his intense affection for Him, could bear. And—oh, what boldness!—he took Him aside and began to rebuke Him.
