Feria Tertia infra Hebdomadam IV post Octavam Paschæ S. Pii V, Papæ et Confessoris ~ III. classis
In the sacred liturgy of this third-class feast, Holy Mother Church sets before us two pillars of Petrine doctrine: the charge of the Prince of the Apostles to his fellow shepherds (1 Pet. 5:1-4, 10-11), and the very moment at Caesarea Philippi when our Lord constituted Peter the Rock upon which He would build His Church (Matt. 16:13-19). The Church does not choose these readings idly. She places them upon the altar on the feast of Pope St. Pius V — that austere Dominican son of St. Dominic, that vigilant guardian of the Roman rite, that pontiff whose Rosary won Lepanto — because in him the Bride of Christ shows us what a shepherd in Peter’s line ought to be.
The Foundation Laid at Caesarea Philippi
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ædificabo Ecclesiam meam, et portæ inferi non prævalebunt adversus eam. “Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18, Douay-Rheims).
The Fathers labored over this passage with reverent precision, knowing that upon its right understanding rests the visible unity of the Church. St. John Chrysostom, in his homilies on St. Matthew, calls Peter “the mouth of the Apostles, the head of that company, the ruler of the whole world” — not by his own native strength, for he was a poor fisherman of Galilee, but because the Father had revealed to him the divine Sonship of Christ, and because Christ Himself willed to build His Church upon the firmness of his confession and his person.
St. Augustine, ever subtle, taught that the Rock is first of all Christ Himself — Petra erat Christus — yet Peter, taking his very name from that Rock, is constituted by the Lord as the visible foundation of ecclesial unity. The two truths do not contend; they coinhere. The bishop of Hippo writes that Peter, in confessing the Christ, stood as a figure of the whole Church, and that to him as one were given the keys which belong to the Church’s communion. Thus the primacy of Peter is no usurpation of Christ’s headship, but its sacramental sign upon earth.
St. Cyprian of Carthage, in his treatise De Unitate Ecclesiæ, presses the matter with the directness of a martyr’s pen: the Lord, that He might manifest unity, founded one Chair, and ordained by His authority that the origin of that unity should begin from one. Whoever forsakes the Chair of Peter, upon whom the Church is built — can he flatter himself that he is in the Church? St. Jerome, writing from his Bethlehem cell to Pope Damasus, makes the same confession in different words: he follows no leader save Christ, yet is joined in communion with the Chair of Peter, for upon that rock he knows the Church is built. And St. Ambrose, with the conciseness of a Roman, gives us the lapidary phrase that has echoed through the centuries: Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia — where Peter is, there is the Church.
St. Leo the Great, himself a successor in that very See, draws from this passage the doctrine of perpetual Petrine presence. In his sermon on the anniversary of his elevation, he teaches that Peter does not cease to preside in his See, and that the office given to him abides in his successors. The keys are not buried with the Apostle in the Vatican earth; they are placed afresh into the hands of every Roman Pontiff, that the Church may never lack her visible foundation while the world endures.
The Charge to the Shepherds
When the Apostle Peter himself takes up the pen, he speaks not as a tyrant but as a fellow elder, a witness of the sufferings of Christ:
Pascite qui in vobis est gregem Dei, providentes non coacte, sed spontanee secundum Deum: neque turpis lucri gratia, sed voluntarie: neque ut dominantes in cleris, sed forma facti gregis ex animo (1 Pet. 5:2-3).
Hear with what fatherly authority and what evangelical poverty he exhorts the bishops and priests of the early Church! They are to feed the flock, not as hirelings driven by gain, not as petty lords trampling the heritage of God, but as shepherds whose lives are themselves the pattern. St. Bede the Venerable, commenting on this passage, observes that the Apostle does not say teach the flock by your words alone, but feed it by the example of your life, since the doctrine of the lips is barren when contradicted by the conduct of the man.
Here is the ancient Catholic conviction that the office of the shepherd is consumed in self-oblation. St. Gregory the Great, in his Liber Regulæ Pastoralis — that mirror of bishops which St. Pius V himself read with profit — sets it down that the ruler of souls must be by humility every man’s companion, and by the zeal of justice exalted above the wicked. The pastor who lords it over the flock has already ceased to be its shepherd; he has become its wolf.
And then, the promise that crowns the labor:
Et cum apparuerit princeps pastorum, percipietis immarcescibilem gloriæ coronam (1 Pet. 5:4).
“When the prince of pastors shall appear, you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory.” The Greek amarantinon — that Latin fittingly renders immarcescibilis — names a flower that does not wither. St. Cyril of Alexandria draws the contrast: the laurels of the Roman games perished within days; the diadems of earthly kings tarnish and pass; but the crown laid up for the faithful shepherd is woven of that very glory which is in Christ, and so participates in His own incorruption.
The God of All Grace
Lest any pastor — or any Christian — grow faint at the magnitude of such a vocation, the Apostle adds those luminous words which the Church places upon our lips this very Tuesday:
Deus autem omnis gratiæ, qui vocavit nos in æternam suam gloriam in Christo Jesu, modicum passos ipse perficiet, confirmabit, solidabitque. Ipsi gloria et imperium in sæcula sæculorum (1 Pet. 5:10-11).
Four verbs, mounting like the steps of an altar: perficiet — He Himself shall perfect; confirmabit — He shall confirm; solidabit — He shall establish. The work is His; the suffering is ours, and brief — modicum passos, “after you have suffered a little.” St. John Chrysostom remarks with his usual evangelical realism that the sufferings of this present age are little not because they are light to bear, but because they are short measured against the eternity of the glory to come, as a single drop weighed against the ocean.
Pope St. Pius V: The Pattern Made Flesh
It is upon this Apostolic charge that Pope Pius V — Antonio Michele Ghislieri, the shepherd from Bosco — fashioned his pontificate. Elected to the Chair of Peter in 1566, in an age when the seamless garment of Christendom had been rent by the Protestant revolt and threatened by the Crescent of the Turk, he did not lord it over the clergy of God; he wore the white Dominican habit beneath the papal robes, walked the streets of Rome barefoot in penance, and fed the flock with the firmness of a father.
He gave us the Missale Romanum of 1570, fixing in Quo Primum a liturgy of such reverence and antiquity that it became the great patrimony of the Roman Church. He promulgated the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent that the faithful might be instructed in sound doctrine. He raised St. Thomas Aquinas to the dignity of Doctor of the Church. And when the Ottoman fleet bore down upon Christendom at Lepanto, this pope had recourse not to political stratagem alone but to the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by whose intercession on October 7th, 1571, the Christian forces won the day. Thereafter he instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory — what we now keep as Our Lady of the Rosary — that the Church might never forget by Whom her battles are truly won.
In him, then, the two readings of this day meet. He was a son of Peter the Rock, jealous for the unity of the Catholic Faith. And he was a shepherd of the flock of God, a pattern from the heart, who knew that the crown of unfading glory awaits not the powerful but the faithful. Modicum passos ipse perficiet.
A Practical Application
Brethren, the lessons of this feast are not the property of pontiffs alone. Every Christian is a steward of some flock — fathers of their households, mothers of their children, every soul of the inner garden of his own heart. Three counsels, then, drawn from these Scriptures and from this saint:
First, examine in what hidden corners of your life you have lorded it over those entrusted to you, rather than serving them as a pattern. Bring this to the tribunal of penance.
Second, take up the Holy Rosary as Pius V did. The five decades offered each day for the intentions of the reigning Pontiff and for Holy Church is a small thing — modicum — but joined to the merits of Christ it is mighty before the Throne.
Third, let the words Tu es Petrus be the rock of your interior peace. Whatever storms shake the visible barque of the Church in any age, the gates of hell shall not prevail. This is not optimism; it is divine promise.
A Closing Prayer
O God, Who, for the overthrow of the enemies of Thy Church, and for the restoration of the beauty of Thy worship, didst vouchsafe to choose blessed Pius as Sovereign Pontiff: grant that we may be defended by his protection, and so cleave unto Thy service, that overcoming all the snares of our enemies, we may rejoice in everlasting peace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
(Collect from the Mass of S. Pii V Papæ et Confessoris)
If this reflection has stirred a desire to go deeper, the Church History learning path will lead you through the Counter-Reformation and the labors of the Tridentine pontiffs; the Sacred Liturgy path will open the riches of the Missal which Pope Pius V codified for all generations.