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Our Lord says to Peter, “You’re not thinking as God thinks. You’re thinking like a human being. Well, if I were he, if I were Peter, I would say in the parlance of today, “Duh! ...What do you think? Give me a break. I’m thinking like a human being, uh-huh...” But you and I know what Our Lord means, looking back on it, that we are members of two worlds, this one and another one. Christ has brought us together to think, with his help, both ways. The acronym for today is in honor of Peter, and it’s WEAK. Thinking like a human being, like we weak human beings, weak because we’re human, W (wavering), E (embarrassed, or embarrassing), A (accepting) and K (kneeling.) In honor of Peter....

Peter was always wavering. He was always planting both feet fully in his mouth. That’s what makes him so loveable and so maddening, our first leader! Using our contemporary lingo, our first Pope, always wavering, up one moment (“You are the Christ.”) and the next moment (“Oh, you’re not going to go and suffer and have trouble.”) And Our Lord says, “Get behind me, Satan!” in the same paragraph. Remember when Our Lord is walking on the water. These are not lovely fables for children. The historicity and validity of the gospels has been checked more than any literature in the history of the Planet. Christ is walking on the water. It’s night. It’s in the gospels. And Peter, ever the braggard, yells out, “Tell me to come to you,” climbing over the other apostles. “Tell me to come to you.” And Our Lord says, “Come.” And Peter (And it’s a storm. It’s a storm!) starts walking. As long as he keeps his eyes on Christ, he’s OK. But he wavers and he looks down. He begins to sink, like a human being. Our Lord grabs him and says, “Why did you doubt? Why did you look away?” Very, very human. Very weak and very human and very loveable.

Now, about wavering and about popes and about Peter. I love the history of the Church and, when we are together on a weekend, I like to bring in little snippets of Church history, if I can connect them to the gospel. And we are talking today about the “First Pope,” weak and wavering. We’ve had over two hundred sixty, most of them splendid, smart and courageous, good guys. But we’ve had six or eight that were lollapalooza losers! And it’s good to remember that, “weak human beings.” Our Lord founded the Church on humans! Alexander VI is a byword for notorious bad behavior, girl friends in the back room. Julius II loved slamming on armor and hopping on horses. He was the Patten of popes, loved going into battle and killing people. And he’d holler at Michelangelo who was trying to get that chapel over.... “What are you doing? Hurry up!” And Michelangelo would say, “I am done when I am done.” There was one pope, a couple hundred years ago, who put out an encyclical (Remember, these are not infallible.) and in the encyclical the following are condemned and “you are in serious sin if you believe in freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press.” That’s all wrong. It was after the French Revolution. We had very human men, most of them magnificent, but a few, like Peter, embarrassingly weak. I first started paying attention to popes in 1946. It’s now 2006. How lucky some of us my age .... if there IS anyone my age.... (Laughter!) But how lucky to look back on the popes in our lifetime. We may not agree with this or that statement of a Pope’s opinion. But they’ve been good men, solid, virtuous, principled men. We’ve been lucky. But human beings waver. And they think like human beings, like the first pope.

The next letter of WEAK is “E.” Embarrassing, or we are embarrassed by. So many of you have probably been awfully embarrassed over the past ten, fifteen years, on your job or at parties. “Oh, you’re a Catholic, huh-ha, really? You have small children? Uh-huh.” And you yourself feel so vulnerable and so sad and so embarrassed by all the headlines. It’s part of the cross and you carry it loyally. There was a sign in the seminary when I was a kid, “Your personality is your cross and your crown.” It’s a cliche but I think it’s true. The Peter braggadocio, impetuous, foot-in-mouth was also loving and generous and terribly loyal in his own scared way. His cross and his crown. We all know personalities, one thing about them is so entrancing and the other, you would like to.....” Talking about being embarrassed, when Peter was with Our Lord in the garden, you remember, the garden. Christ is sweating blood and they come to arrest him, and Peter whips out his sword (so Peter-ish!) and he cuts off the ear of the soldier. It’s in the gospels. And Our Lord, so embarrassed, I mean Peter has been with him three years and he hasn’t got it yet. Our Lord reaches out and he heals the soldier’s ear and he turns to Peter and he says to Peter, “Put back your sword. He who takes up the sword is going to perish by the sword.” It’s a statement Our Lord made which has still not been able to be absorbed by the Christian mentality, because we are weak humans. But maybe in another thousand years, people will say, “Oh, he meant that!” Maybe... But we are weak and human. But Christ said it, and he was embarrassed by Peter who wasn’t getting any of the message for the past three years. ....Wham-o!!

I was visiting a former student who is a writer. And he hadn’t been going to church but now he’s back in church. And the thing that brought him back to church was a TV show, (You never know what it’s going to be!) with a nun, named “Sister Wendy.” I’ve mentioned her to a few of you at one of the night’s lectures. And Sister Wendy is a British nun. She’s done a whole series on PBS on great art and sculpture. She’s really very smart. She has an overbite which is like the eighth wonder of the world, but she’s extremely intelligent and she’s got that lyrically lovely British accent, which I love. And I am sitting there with my former student who’s a writer by profession. And he says, “I love this nun, her appreciation of the aesthetics, of Christian art and music. It’s brought me back to the faith,” and he meant it. He’s still back! I’m watching this thing and this nun, in full habit (She’s a cloistered nun but she’s hired and she does all these things and the money goes to the convent.)... In any event, she came to a statue of this big, brawny Greco-Roman athlete .... in the buff! And she said, “Isn’t this absolutely splendid? Look at his magnificent torso, those rippling muscles....” and, as the camera panned around “... and the carefully magnificently sculpted buttocks!” Well, I shrank farther into the couch, thinking “Did that nun really....” and she went right back to “ Oh, this marmoreal sculptured beauty! Ripe pomegranites! Those buttocks!” Meanwhile, my writer friend is applauding and I’m embarrassed. There are some people from the East Coast, when they come here to visit, they are embarrassed at the exuberance of this bunch, talking and chatting and laughing and telling a little joke before Mass. They are. ....”Is this a...Catholic Church?” Uh-huh. If I went back to the East Coast, I’d be embarrassed at the gloom and solid silence, which is equally faithful and equally good people but we can always be embarrassed, and I know you’ve been embarrassed, some of you, on your jobs, “Oh, are you a Catholic? And send your kids to Catholic school? Any of them serve on the altar?” But you’re here, despite the sneer. You are here. It’s always embarrassing, all our lives sometimes to be believers. But you’re here.

The third is “Accepting,” and this is where real mature faith steps in, accepting. We weak human beings, we learn to accept. It’s amazing how the early Church writers accepted Peter’s goofs. Many writers, scholarly writers who deal with the origins of religious denominations, are startled to this day, at the validity of the gospels because the gospels come right out and tell us that, at one point, Our Lord turned to the first Pope and said, “Get behind me, Satan!” There is not other parallel in other literature where the leader, the human founder who carried on the faith is put down by the God himself. “Get behind me, Satan.” We accept that, as the early Church did. He was a loser in some ways because he was a human and weak. And then, just before Our Lord leaves this planet, remember he turns to Peter and he says (It’s in the gospels.) “When you were a young man, Peter, you walked where you wanted to walk and did what you wanted to do, but when you shall be old, Peter, someone shall tie your hands and take you where you do not want to go.” And the gospel writer adds, “In this, Jesus is referring to the way that Peter would die.” Arrested in Rome and crucified, upside down. When your hands are tied, where you do not want to go... I hate that expression! Maybe because it’s so valid. “Your hands are tied.” So are most of yours. Tomorrow, Monday, your hands are tied. You got to do things that maybe you don’t particularly want to do. I hate the phrase because when my father was on a month’s bender and hadn’t paid the rent, the manager, who was only doing his job, came and knocked on the door. He said, “Mister Dooble,” (I found that more trying than his banging on the door, mangling the name.) “Mister Dooble, my hands are tied. You and the boys will have to leave. You’re two months behind on the rent.” He kept saying it. And even as a kid, I knew “He’s right. His hands are tied.” “Well, I’ll pay the rent,” says Dad. Your hands are tied. Your kids no longer come to church. OK. They’re adults. Your hands are tied. Tomorrow you are going to a job, some of you, that just drives you out of your mind with its routine and its tedium. Or others’ hands are tied because the job is so intensely stressful and supervised and categorized. Well your hands are tied because you got people you love and bills to pay. The thing is, with us, in today’s gospel Christ says, “It’s not just meaningless.... meaningless, dumb horror. Take up your cross. That’s what you got to do today. I’m with you.” That’s why I asked at the beginning. Pretend you never heard it before. I don’t know how people cope without faith. I don’t. Just going to work, horrible jobs without sensing “Christ said he’s with me. I’m carrying the cross.”

OK, and finally we are up to “K,” ...Kneel. I love it when I see some of you kneel as you come into church. Some of you don’t because you’re so caught up in chatting, conversation. You sit down and you converse. But others kneel. It’s a very powerful gesture. It means that, as the lowering of the body, “You’re the Lord. I am not. Good!” And you kneel. You know, you can go to twelve-step meetings if you want to. They have open twelve-step meetings. You won’t be bored. If they are closed, they are just for the people who have the addiction. But many of them are open, twelve-step meetings. I was to one quite recently and the guy (man) was sitting there. He said, “You know, my family is worried about my drinking but I don’t really think I have a problem. My family is always worried. But I don’t think I have a problem. Before I come to a meeting, my head says “You don’t need a twelve-step meeting. You’re fine. You can quit whenever you want to, but somehow I’m here.... My head is arguing but my feet are believing. I’ve got believing feet. My feet brought me here.” So did yours. You might be bored, tired, very exhausted. Oh, God, him again! Monday... But your feet, believing feet, brought you here, despite what the head may be saying. Even doubts, “I don’t know if I believe any of it!” And you are believing, kneeling. They say a lot to the Lord, kneeling.

I told you many times, once a year, about Thomas Merton in his great autobiography, mentions the fact (He went to my parish church. I’m always dropping names! But it’s just a coincidence. He went to Corpus Christi in New York City, by Columbia University, taking instructions in Catholicism, Thomas Merton. And the priest was instructing him, real smart priest, Newman chaplain at Columbia. And Merton had studied intensely Aquinas, Augustine, the Sacraments, and Merton still said, “I couldn’t take the step. I just couldn’t take the step to be baptized.” And, he would go to Mass, not receive of course, but go to Mass on the weekday. And, one day, he looked over and he saw somebody kneeling. (I told you this every year.) A young woman was kneeling and Merton checked her out. It wasn’t that she was a knockout beauty or anything like that. Just the way she was kneeling, and her expression. It was attentive, ineffable, which means, as you know, no words. It clicked. Anyone who could attend this with that kind of expression and that kneeling. Merton went right next door. He knocked on the door of the rectory and said, “Baptize me. I got it! I suddenly got it!” Just by that physical gesture!

OK. This is the end, speaking of thinking like a human and being humanly weak, some of you tell me at the back of the Church, before the procession, that you’ve been back to New York and you’ve gone to that, you know the World Trade area and the Wall Street area and the parish there where I was for six years, is St. Peter’s, appropriately. St. Peter’s. And if you go there after two o’clock on a weekday, they’ve had a whole lot of Masses and stuff and a priest comes out, has been doing this now for a decade, and he straightens up, the pews, you know, the Mass cards and the missalettes because all the Masses are over. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed. His name is “Fussner.” His nickname is “Fussy,” because he is, very, very fussy. And everything has to be straightened out and cleaned. And one day, there was a woman sitting there, beautifully dressed, a big shot lady executive, in the chapel. It was hot. It was summer. But it was air-conditioned, and she was sitting there, eating an ice cream cone. And Fussy was straightening out the pews and he came to the lady and said, “Excuse me....” “Yes?” “I don’t think,” said he, the priest, “it’s appropriate to be eating ice cream here in the chapel.” She leaned back and snorted, and said, “Do you know who I am? I’ve been coming to this church daily for years, and I contribute heavily to YOUR support.” And Father Fussner said, “I appreciate that but I don’t think ice cream is fitting in the chapel.” She continued to eat and he continued to fuss. My last week there, May of ‘99, it was very hot. It was air-conditioned. We were down in the chapel, and she was there. It was around three o’clock, sitting there, cone-less on this occasion, and Fussy was straightening out the Mass cards, the Missalettes, and I was behind the sacristy snoopervising. She was sitting there and when Fussy shimmered past, she said, “When I see you, I cannot pray.” And he leaned over the pew and said to her, “And when I see you I’ve GOT TO pray!” True story. And I thought then, my last week in New York, snooping in the sacristy, I thought, “Well, there she is, very human and weak and probably seething, and Fussy straightening and cleaning, and me snooping, all very weak, all thinking like humans, but all together, all together in the Church. We’re not a bad audience for Our Lord to look out on. Amen