This probably signifies that Eliacim should become high-priest in his father's place; and gives us a plain proof that the keys were an emblem of the sovereign pontificate in the Jewish Church. In the Apocalypse of St. John, the same emblem of the keys is used to designate the sovereign pontificate of Jesus Christ Himself: "These things saith the Holy One and the True One, He that hath the key of David; He that openeth, and no man shutteth; shutteth, and no man openeth." [Footnote 81]
[Footnote 81: Apoc. iii. 7.]
[USCCB: Revelation iii. 7.]
Our Lord, as the lineal descendant of David, was the lawful King of the Jews, and this royal lineage according to earthly and temporal laws, was typical of His inherent royalty as the Son of God. Therefore, the key of David, or the outward and visible sign of David's royalty, is taken as expressive of His supreme dominion as Lord and Redeemer of the world. When Christ promised to give the keys of the kingdom of heaven—the keys of His own kingdom, and the symbols of His own Sovereignty—to St. Peter, He must have intended to delegate that sovereignty to him, and to constitute him His Vicar on the earth: To make it still more plain that He meant this, our Lord made a distinct and express declaration to this effect, in these words: "And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." These words designate the plenitude of power to be conferred on St. Peter, of making laws, and binding the consciences of all to observe them, punishing transgressors, abrogating these same laws and pardoning offenders, and doing whatever else the good of the Church or its individual members may require, according to the diversity of times and circumstances. Jesus Christ gives before hand the seal and warrant of His divine authority to all these laws. This is what is called, in the language of commerce and politics, giving carte blanche. King Charles V. of Spain, when he sent commissioners to America to inquire into the abuses and cruelties perpetrated by the avaricious Spanish colonists against the Indians, gave them a number of blank sheets already signed and sealed with the royal sign-manual, that they might promulgate royal edicts according to their own judgment. In the same way, Jesus Christ promises that He will give to St. Peter this unlimited power of exercising jurisdiction, in His name, in the Catholic Church, with the sealed sign-manual of heaven. But Jesus Christ not only promised to bestow this power on St. Peter: He made to him, after His resurrection and before His ascension, a formal grant of this power, and solemnly delivered up the care and government of His universal flock into his hands. This fact is recorded by St. John, in the twenty-first chapter of his Gospel. Everything about this chapter is mysterious and sublime in the highest degree, and every word, every circumstance, points to that high office of the Chief Pastor, and, after Christ, principal founder of the Christian religion, which was given to St. Peter.
It was an awful moment; like that mysterious and solemn period of twilight, when the sun has set, but still leaves some lingering gleam of his light behind him, before the dark hour of night draws on, and the milder and fainter radiance of the moon succeeds to the brightness of day—the brief period of transition from day to night—from light to darkness—the holiest hour of the day, when the soul, as it were, naturally withdraws from the world towards God and heaven. Such a moment had now come in the progress of time, the twilight of the world. Jesus Christ, the Light of the world—the Sun of Justice, who had risen in the East with healing in his beams—had gone down to the grave, had closed His earthly career, and the world henceforth, so long illuminated by the presence of the bright Sun of truth and grace, would have no longer any other light to shine upon it except the reflected light of the Catholic Church.
The time of night and of the absence of Jesus Christ from His disciples was approaching. And yet He was not altogether withdrawn. Still, in His spiritual and glorified body, He lingered on the earth, coming and going, approaching and vanishing before His disciples. He was still with them, but no longer as an inhabitant of the earth, but of heaven. At this time it was that St. Peter said to his fellow-disciples, "I go a-fishing." Who can fail to see here, with all the wisest and holiest interpreters of the Scripture, a mysterious foreshadowing of that great fishery for the souls of men, in which the Apostolic net was to draw so many into the Church? It was Peter who was the leader and chief here, and by his orders the nets were cast. Suddenly, Jesus Christ appeared standing on the shore, and commanded them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat. They did so, and, although they had before this caught nothing, their net was immediately so filled with large fishes that they could not draw it. It required the assistance of all those who were on board several other boats to draw the net. And yet, when the Lord commanded some of these fishes to be brought, St. Peter, alone, went and drew the net up on the beach. Evidently do these emblematic events indicate St. Peter as the one who should command the ship of the Church, and preside over the grand fishery of souls, and by his supernatural power should pull the net by which the elect of God were drawn from the waves of perdition to the shore of eternal life.
Jesus Christ assembled His disciples around Him on the beach, by the seaside, and they dined together from the fish which they had taken. Then, when this mysterious meal, the parting banquet of Jesus and His disciples, was finished, the Lord exacted from St. Peter three times a profession of his love, and of his peculiar love—a love greater than that of the other Apostles. "Simon Peter, lovest thou Me more than these?" And thrice He gave him the solemn charge: "Feed My lambs. … Feed My lambs. … Feed My sheep." In these words, Jesus Christ evidently committed not one or the other portion of His flock, but His entire flock, all His people, the universal Church throughout the world, to his pastoral care. The expression, "Feed My lambs—feed My sheep," indicates much more than simply to give them their food, namely, by teaching salutary doctrine. Two different words are used in the original Greek, [Greek text]; which is literally in Latin, Pasce in cibo, agnos meos—Feed My lambs. But after using this expression, which indicates the tender and paternal care of the pastoral office, He uses another expressing its authority, [Greek text]; this signifies, as a learned theologian (Perrone) remarks, pascere cum imperio, pascere præsidendo, to feed by ruling, to feed by presiding, or to feed, rule, and preside over at the same time, as a shepherd over his flock. This is in accordance with the usage of ancient writers and the Scriptures.
In Homer and other ancient authors, kings are called shepherds or pastors, and poimaine, feed, signifies to rule or exercise kingly authority. In these words, then, Jesus Christ constituted St. Peter chief pastor and supreme ruler over His universal flock—sheep and lambs together; not merely the lambs, who represent the laity, but the sheep, those to whom the lambs are subject, and by whom they are fed—that is, the bishops and pastors of the Church. It is in vain that the enemies of St. Peter's chair exert all their ingenuity to escape the force of these passages. They are too plain and clear to be evaded, and, after centuries of exertion to heave the Rock of Peter out of the Scriptures, there it stands, an immovable and unquestionable fact that the Rock of Peter is the foundation of the Catholic Church, that the Catholic Church is built on the Rock of Peter, that Peter received the keys of heaven from Jesus Christ, and was constituted by Him chief pastor over His universal flock.
And here allow me to remark how singular it is that Protestants should be ready to build up with out hesitation a vast pyramid of doctrine on the narrow foundation of a few texts of Scripture, and at the same time reject the most clear and unequivocal statements of the New Testament. For example, they will most positively assert the transfer of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, because the word Lord's Day is once used, and the assembling of the faithful on the first day of the week is once casually mentioned, although nothing is said of their being an observance of divine obligation intended to supersede the Sabbath. They will prove the baptism of infants from the circumcision of Jewish children, and from the fact that some entire families were baptized, although there is no evidence that there were any infants in these families. Some will prove Episcopacy, and others Presbyterianism, and others Congregationalism, from the Scriptures. And yet they will reject without hesitation the evidence of the supremacy of Peter, which is so clear that even some Protestants are forced to admit it in a partial sense; and the celebrated Jewish infidel Salvador, a man who perhaps excels all the modern advocates of infidelity in perspicacity of intellect and ingenuity of reasoning, declares with out hesitation that the supremacy of the See of St. Peter is an institution of Jesus Christ, and an essential part of Christianity. It is one among many proofs that those who profess to make the Bible their only rule do not really derive their doctrine from a candid examination of the Scriptures; but that they receive what they have been taught by their parents and religious teachers, and search the Scriptures to find proof and confirmation of these doctrines. Thus, each one, in stead of conforming his belief to the Scripture, bends the Scripture into conformity with his belief. Those parts of the Scripture which are not easily bent into this conformity remain to him a dead letter, they make no impression on his mind, and, no matter how clear and plain they may be, he forgets them if he can, and, if he is forced to pay attention to them, he explains them away. Thus it has been with the passages of the New Testament which prove so clearly the supremacy of St. Peter. There is nothing in the New Testament more clear, more plain, more explicit, more obvious, than this supremacy; when these various passages have been once collated, placed in juxtaposition with each other, carefully examined and reflected on, and confronted with the great fact of the perpetual existence of the supremacy of the Roman Pontiffs as the acknowledged successors of St. Peter. This last topic I have not directly considered in this discourse, but have reserved it for another. Nevertheless, whoever will attentively consider what is involved in the very idea of St. Peter's supremacy will see at once that this supremacy must be, by its very nature, perpetual. It was made the foundation of a perpetual structure; it extended over all bishops and all the faithful, without any limit of time or place; it provided for the exercise of that power of the keys which is necessary in all ages; and it was made the means of keeping the rulers of the Church in unity of faith under the severest assaults of Satan, which are undoubtedly those of the last days of the world.