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Matthew 16:17-19
New Catholic Bible
Matthew 16:17-19
New Catholic Bible
17 Then Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood[a] has not revealed this to you but my heavenly Father. 18 And I say to you: You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church,[b] and the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”[c]
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- Matthew 16:17 Flesh and blood: a Scriptural expression that designates human beings in their weak and fragile condition. Has not revealed this to you but my heavenly Father: the source of Peter’s confession of Christ’s divinity is the heavenly Father.
- Matthew 16:18 You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church: the Aramaic word for “rock” (kepa) is transliterated into Greek as Cephas, the name used for Peter in the Pauline letters (1 Cor 1:12; Gal 1:18), and is translated as “Peter” in Jn 1:42. Church: a word that occurs only here and in Mt 18:17 (twice) in the New Testament. The Church will have Peter as her foundation stone. But of course her real foundation is faith in Jesus, the Son of God. Peter will have the primacy among all the apostles and be the visible head of the Church, as will his successors, the Popes. The gates of the netherworld designate the powers of death. The Church will resist all the vicissitudes of time because of her foundation on a rock.
- Matthew 16:19 Receiving the power of the keys, symbol of authority, Peter becomes Christ’s representative on earth. He is given the power to bind and loose, i.e., to condemn or absolve, to prohibit or allow. Peter is the doorkeeper (Mk 13:34) but not the Teacher or the Father (Mt 23:9-10).
