All Dressed Up…
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 3:30 PM
The church in Rome has all these charming little customs—like dropping rose petals through the oculum of the former Pantheon on Pentecost.
Today’s feast of the Chair of St. Peter is the occasion for one of them: the dressing of the statue of the apostle in St. Peter’s basilica in vestments (scroll down for pix).
They do it again on the feast of Ss. Peter & Paul.
Today’s feast is a celebration of the gift of the papacy to the Church. Because of it, the rest of us don’t have to be theologians when disputes arise—we know where to turn for guidance.
A couple of years ago, Benedict XVI highlighted the fact that the papacy is also a safeguard for legitimate differences within the Church:
“within the Church,” we read in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “particular Churches hold a rightful place; these Churches retain their own traditions, without in any way opposing the primacy of the Chair of Peter, which presides over the whole assembly of charity and protects legitimate differences, while at the same time assuring that such differences do not hinder unity but rather contribute toward it.”
There’s a relic in the Vatican believed to be the literal chair of St. Peter.
You can read about that in the latter half of this article.
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