Today we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter.

It is a day wherein we should give thanks to God for the gift of the Petrine ministry to the Church and wherein we should pray and offer our Lenten sacrifices for the Holy Father.

If there was ever a moment in the third millennium when the Chair of Peter—the authority of Peter—needs to shine forth as a "throne of truth”[1] and hope, it is now.

But even if the Chair of Peter should crumble—and we know it cannot, because Christ promises us in today’s Gospel, the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it—but even if it could, we place our hope first and foremost in another Chair—the cross—"God’s chair in the world”[2]—as St. John Paul II puts it.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, which isn’t simply a celebration of a physical object or of just Saint Peter; it commemorates that “privileged sign of God’s love,” the papacy, and the spiritual authority entrusted to that supreme shepherd to guide the entire people of God.[1] To be united with Peter and His successors is to be united with Christ, and perhaps we have no better example of what this belief might cost than the life of His Eminence Ignatius Cardinal Kung Pinmei, Bishop of Shanghai.