Potato? Pope? The power of words: Homily for Thursday, February 22, 2024

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So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.

Potato? Pope?

When I was in seminary college, they would not allow me to take a guided reading or an independent study in French, which I knew relatively well at the time. They made me take Spanish, which was okay. It was good to know a little bit of Spanish, and I have to say I know a little bit of Spanish, emphasis on the word “little.”

I certainly am not fluent, but I did learn enough where if I had to read Mass in Spanish without any understanding of what I was saying or little understanding, I could do so. In fact, I have. But there was one instance in particular that was of interest to me, and it was when we were talking about French fries.

And I don’t know if you know the word for French fry, but French fries in Spanish is “las papas fritas.” It’s a feminine word, “papa,” “potato.” The Pope, however, is not a feminine word. The Pope is “el papa.” I did not realize that as we were supposed to be translating something that apparently did involve the Pope, because I, or maybe I was talking about French fries, I don’t know, and said “los papas fritas,” which means “fried popes.”

Which is not exactly what I meant to say. But it strikes me as an important word to kind of get a picture of today as we celebrate the Chair of Peter. Words matter, but their proper understanding is why. If we don’t properly understand the meaning of a word, then in fact we can draw conclusions about it that are inaccurate.

And so it’s important for us to really have a sense of what words mean. What does it mean to be the Pope? You know, I’m going to be honest, I think we’ve been on a run of very, very, very good popes. If you look at history, we have had a whole string of popes in the recent history that I think each in their own way were holy men. I would suggest that while maybe I wouldn’t have agreed with this prudential decision or that one, each in their own way loved the Church and sought and sought to discern what was best for the Church in the time in which they lived.

The problem, of course, is that we don’t always understand words and we can dismiss certain words because we don’t understand them. I’ll use a very charged word, hierarchy. If you use the word hierarchy in certain contexts, it automatically becomes something that for some should be followed blindly and for others should be completely dismissed. It’s unfortunate.

All the word hierarchy means is that there’s a right order to things. There’s a hierarchy in a family. The parents guide, shape, form their children. What a mess it would be if we looked at sports teams and said, well, there isn’t going to be any hierarchy. We’re going to let the sports teams do whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. There’s a reason why coaches make good salaries.

There’s a hierarchy. We can look at this in any number of ways, and it’s a necessary thing, because at the end of the day, you don’t want to be completely like Dominicans. We can discuss and discuss and discuss and discuss and never arrive at a decision. Hierarchy helps us to arrive at a decision. Someone has to make a decision.

And so what we celebrate today, quite honestly, is something that’s really important. Jesus knew this basic and fundamental truth that there needs to be a hierarchy. There needs to be some order. And he didn’t pull this out of thin air. He got it from the Jewish faith. There was a hierarchy in the Jewish faith. This is what I think the readings are about.

Now, I will say that sometimes we misunderstand the meaning of the word hierarchy because we lose sight of the message in the first reading. Oftentimes when we get frustrated with hierarchy, we’re not frustrated with hierarchy per se. We’re frustrated with the leadership style. We’re frustrated with the type of leader that might not seek out advice from others, the opinions of others, the thoughts of others.

In our way of life as Dominicans, we have a very interesting way that kind of guarantees, I would say, that the provincial or the prior can’t just do things on his own without consultation. When we elect a prior at a chapter or when we elect a provincial at a chapter, the provincial does not choose his council of advisors. The chapter does.

The provincial can choose someone to represent him. He can create someone or name someone that’s a socius. He can name vicars for certain areas. But at the end of the day, who he has to rely on is not up to him. Dominic was very big on these checks and balances.

Now I mention all of this because ultimately two things are clear as we celebrate this feast of the chair of Peter. The first and the most important comes from the gospel. Peter has pride of place in leadership because he recognized probably first among the apostles that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. He was the Christ.

This is a powerful confession long before we might have expected it to be so. And the second thing is we certainly need to be people of faith and people of reason who recognize that those two areas go together. But we have to be careful that we don’t dismiss something simply because we don’t like it or we don’t like the way that things get said or done.

That’s also a lesson of Dominican life. You make your point in discussion and then you rely on the wisdom of the brothers to make it. And it may not be what you think should be done. It may even significantly be something you think is absolutely wrong. But if we’re faithful to the gospel and recognize that we are called to recognize that the true shepherd of the church is the Lord Jesus Christ, then indeed we will be people of new life.

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