Peter and the Prophet Jonah

We will conclude our series on Peter by looking a final time at the new names that Jesus gave him. When I visited Peter’s tomb underneath St. Peter’s Basilica, it really struck me that Peter’s name means “rock,” and it is upon this rock that Christ built his Church. Peter’s bones lie beneath all the rock upon which the foundation of the basilica is built. What a fitting symbol. The Basilica of St. Peter is literally built on Peter’s bones. Symbolically—as well as actually—Peter is the rock upon which Christ builds his Church.

Prophet Jonah, Sistine Chapel, by Michelangelo

Jesus also changed Peter’s surname to “Bar-Jonah.” On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the story of Genesis. Great prophets of the Old Testament align the sides of the ceiling, while the Last Judgment is painted on the wall above the main altar. Basically, Michelangelo captured the entire story of salvation from the beginning until the end, from Creation until the Last Judgment. Whenever cardinal-electors come together to choose a successor to Peter, Michelangelo wanted them to see and contemplate this grand drama unfolding all around them. He wanted them to realize that they would be judged on how they voted.

Among the many prophets that Michelangelo depicted, one is larger than the rest—Jonah, along with the figure of a large fish. Why was Jonah included, and why is he larger than the other prophets? When you look closer, you see that Jonah is placed on one of the capitals—the upper end of a column—and it looks like he and the fish are about to fall off. If you look downward, they would fall directly on the cathedra, or chair, of the Holy Father. Michelangelo was a very devout man and a great student of the Bible. In particular, he studied the Scriptures in detail before painting these images. He understood that Jonah was a key symbol for Peter and that Peter and his successors, the popes, were to be “bar-Jonahs”—prophets like Jonah—entrusted with proclaiming God’s message of love, mercy, and forgiveness to the world.

Since her foundation, the Church has always been called to look outward. Peter the Galilean, like Jonah, was sent to the great capital of the world of that time, which happened to be Israel’s archenemy, to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. Every pope is likewise called to proclaim the Good News of repentance to the entire world. As Christians, we cannot turn inward. We must go out into the streets and proclaim the truth.

The story of Peter is our story, and it is worth retelling. It’s worth telling how we go from Jesus in Galilee to the Catholic Church in Rome by following the footsteps of Jesus’s greatest disciple, Peter the Galilean.

Let us pray that God will give us grace and strength so that nothing may separate us from his love. May we let go of all the things about which we are anxious, all of the things of which we are afraid, and all of the things that preoccupy our thoughts and our hearts. May God help us to understand that these things are as nothing compared to the love of Christ.