On the one hand, we have Christ’s promise that he will always be with his Church; no matter how powerful those gates of hell may seem – as perhaps they do at times in our own age – he will not abandon us. He will keep us in the truth. What a gift: we can know the truth, he has promised it to his Church – his teaching, the teaching of his Church, is the truth.

On the other hand, he entrusts to Peter the keys, the symbol of the pastoral governance of his Church, a ministry shared in, each in their proper order and degree, by the other apostles, their successors, and their successors’ closest collaborators, priests.

Thank goodness for that first promise, for it means that, no matter how inept we are, he will never allow us to do irreparable damage to the Church!