With Commemoration of St. Pudentiana, Virgin Feria Tertia infra Hebdomadam IV post Pascha — III. classis
On this nineteenth day of May, the Church in her traditional calendar lifts before our eyes the figure of St. Peter Celestine, that humble hermit of the Abruzzi mountains who was drawn from his cave to sit upon the Chair of Peter, and who, with rare and holy liberty, laid down the tiara to return to the silence wherein he had first found God. The Epistle and Gospel appointed for his feast — 1 Petri V, 1-4. 10-11 and Matthæum XVI, 13-19 — speak with singular force when read in the light of this Pontiff’s life, for they touch upon the twofold mystery of the Petrine office: the rock upon which Christ has built His Church, and the shepherd who must feed the flock of God not by constraint, but willingly.
Tu es Petrus: The Confession and the Foundation
The Gospel pericope opens in the regions of Cæsarea Philippi, that pagan place at the foot of Mount Hermon where the rock-face was honoured as a sanctuary of false gods. There, beneath the very crags of idolatry, Our Lord poses the question that pierces every age: Quem dicunt homines esse Filium hominis? — “Whom do men say that the Son of man is?” The opinions of men are surveyed — John the Baptist, Elias, Jeremias, one of the prophets — and then the question narrows: Vos autem quem me esse dicitis?
It is Peter who answers. Tu es Christus, Filius Dei vivi.
St. Leo the Great, in his great sermon on the anniversary of his own elevation to the Apostolic See, contemplates this moment with unsurpassed clarity:
“When the Lord asked the disciples whom men believed Him to be, blessed Peter replied, saying: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. The Lord said to him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. That is, thou art blessed for this reason: because My Father hath taught thee; earthly opinion hath not deceived thee, but heavenly inspiration hath instructed thee; and neither flesh nor blood, but He whose only-begotten Son I am, hath manifested Me to thee.” (Sermo IV, in Anniversario Assumptionis suæ)
St. Augustine, with that incomparable precision proper to him, distinguishes the Petra from Petrus: “The rock (petra) is Christ; and upon this foundation Peter himself was built. For the foundation other than that which is laid, no man can lay, which is Christ Jesus.” Yet Augustine does not thereby diminish the dignity granted to the Apostle; rather, he shows that Peter’s strength is wholly derivative — a rock because he confessed the Rock, a foundation because he rested upon the true Foundation. This is the very pattern of every legitimate authority in the Church: it is granted, not seized; received, not contrived.
St. John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage, observes the weight of what follows: Et tibi dabo claves regni cælorum. “Behold,” he says, “how Christ leads Peter to a high understanding of Himself. These things He gives him to do and to be: He commits to him the Church; He sets him over all the brethren; He makes him a fisher of the world.” (Hom. LIV in Matthæum) The keys are no mere ornament. They are the instruments of binding and loosing, the visible sign of an invisible jurisdiction that reaches even unto heaven.
Pascite qui in vobis est gregem Dei: The Shepherd’s Charge
The Epistle, drawn from the First Letter of the same Peter to whom the keys were entrusted, reveals how this Apostle understood his office not as dominion but as service. Seniores ergo, qui in vobis sunt, obsecro consenior — “The seniors therefore that are among you, I beseech, who am myself also an ancient.” Mark the humility: he who could have written as the Vicar of Christ, the Prince of the Apostles, the holder of the keys writes instead as a fellow-elder, a consenior.
He sets forth three conditions for the right exercise of pastoral office:
Non coacte, sed spontanee secundum Deum — not by constraint, but willingly according to God. Neque turpis lucri gratia, sed voluntarie — not for filthy lucre’s sake, but voluntarily. Neque ut dominantes in cleris, sed forma facti gregis ex animo — neither as lording it over the clergy, but being made a pattern of the flock from the heart.
St. Gregory the Great, himself a Pope who longed always for the contemplative cell from which he had been drawn, gives the perfect commentary on these verses in his Regula Pastoralis. He teaches that the shepherd must be “near to each one by compassion, and lifted above all by contemplation,” warning above all against that subtle pride which transforms a pastor into a tyrant: “For the ruler should not seek to be loved more than the truth, lest while he desires to be loved more than the truth, he be found to have departed from the truth itself.” (Reg. Past. II, 8)
It is here that the figure of St. Peter Celestine speaks with such piercing eloquence. Drawn from his hermitage at the age of eighty-five, crowned with the tiara amid the acclamations of cardinals weary of long contention, he found himself wholly unsuited to the labyrinth of curial affairs. With a courage that scandalized the worldly and consoled the saints, he renounced the papacy after but five months, judging that the salvation of his soul required the return to solitude. Dante, in a famous and unjust line, placed him among those who made il gran rifiuto — the great refusal. But the Church, who sees more deeply than poets, raised him to her altars.
For Celestine understood what St. Peter the Apostle taught: that the pastoral office is not a possession but a stewardship, and that the forma gregis — the pattern of the flock — must be sanctity, not statecraft. His abdication was not refusal but obedience: an obedience to the prior call of contemplation which he discerned, in conscience, he could not abandon without peril.
Et cum apparuerit princeps pastorum: The Crown of Glory
The Epistle continues: Et cum apparuerit princeps pastorum, percipietis immarcescibilem gloriæ coronam — “And when the prince of pastors shall appear, you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory.” Here the Apostle reminds every shepherd, and indeed every Christian, that all earthly authority is provisional. The true Prince of Pastors is Christ Himself, and every mitre, every staff, every key entrusted in this life is held in trust against the day of His appearing.
St. Bede the Venerable, commenting on this passage, observes that the crown is called immarcescibilis — unfading — to distinguish it from the perishable garlands of the athletes and the laurel of earthly princes. “For the glory of this world withers as the grass,” he writes, “but the crown which the Chief Shepherd bestows endures unto the ages of ages.”
And then comes that magnificent doxology with which the Epistle closes: 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. Amen. “But the God of all grace, who hath called us into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little, will himself perfect you, and confirm you, and establish you. To him be glory and empire for ever and ever. Amen.”
Four verbs, ascending like the steps of a ladder: perficiet, confirmabit, solidabit — He shall perfect, confirm, establish. Christ Himself completes the work begun in baptism, strengthens the soul against the assaults of the enemy, and finally fixes it immovably in the love of God. This is the trajectory of every saint, and most especially of those whose office demands they suffer in a peculiar way for the flock.
The Commemoration of St. Pudentiana
To-day’s Mass also bears the commemoration at Lauds of St. Pudentiana, that Roman virgin of the second century, daughter of the senator Pudens, whose house — the famed titulus Pudentis on the Viminal — tradition holds was hallowed by the residence of St. Peter himself when he came to Rome. There is a profound liturgical fittingness in this conjunction: the Pope who refused the throne is commemorated alongside the virgin in whose ancestral house the first Pope had dwelt. The Petrine office, traced from the rock of Cæsarea Philippi to the catacombs of Rome, to the cave of Celestine, to our own day — this is the visible thread of apostolic continuity which the traditional calendar so beautifully preserves.
Practical Application
What, then, shall the faithful soul take from this feast?
First, a renewed reverence for the Petrine office in its true nature — not as a worldly monarchy, but as a sacred stewardship instituted by Christ Himself for the unity of His Church. To love the Pope is to love what Christ established, even when those who hold the office must, like Celestine, be measured against the standard of sanctity.
Second, a deeper understanding of authority within our own spheres. Whether you are a father, a mother, a teacher, an employer, or a priest, the words of St. Peter address you: non ut dominantes, sed forma facti gregis ex animo — not as lording it, but as being made a pattern from the heart. True authority sanctifies those who exercise it only when it is held with detachment, exercised in service, and ordered to the salvation of those entrusted.
Third, the courage to choose the higher good even at great cost. Celestine’s renunciation teaches us that fidelity to one’s particular vocation may require the surrender of honours that others would grasp eagerly. Discernment of God’s will is not always discernment of the greater dignity, but always of the will of the Father.
To practical devotion, then: pray to-day for the Holy Father, whoever he be, that he may be granted the grace to feed the flock non coacte, sed spontanee. Pray for all bishops, priests, and superiors. And examine yourself: in those small authorities entrusted to you, are you forma gregis — a pattern to those beneath you — or do you sometimes lord it over them?
Oratio
The Collect of the day, which we pray with the universal Church:
Deus, qui beátum Petrum Cæléstinum ad summi pontificátus ápicem sublimásti, quique illum humilitátis causa pótius deserére, quam tenére docuísti: concéde propítius; ut, ejus exémplo, cuncta mundi despicere, et ad promíssa humílibus præmia perveníre felíciter mereámur. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum…
O God, who didst raise blessed Peter Celestine to the height of the supreme pontificate, and didst teach him to forsake it rather than retain it for the sake of humility: graciously grant, that, by his example, we may deservedly despise all the things of this world, and happily attain to the rewards promised to the humble. Through our Lord Jesus Christ…
S. Petre Cælestine, ora pro nobis. S. Pudentiana, ora pro nobis.
If you wish to follow this thread further, the Lives of the Saints path would lead naturally next to the Confessor-Popes of the medieval Church — St. Gregory VII, St. Pius V — whose pontificates illuminate by contrast and complement the renunciation of Celestine. Alternatively, the Theology and Doctrine path opens upon the Thomistic treatment of the Petrine primacy in the Contra Errores Graecorum, where the Angelic Doctor sets forth from the Fathers the indefectible foundation of the Roman See.