This year, the feast of the Chair of St. Peter comes the day after Ash Wednesday. At Mass for the feast, we hear the familiar account of Peter's confession of faith, and Jesus' response. In my reflection last night on Ash Wednesday, I noted the importance of focusing on God during this time of Lent. Who is God? Who is Jesus, in relation to God? Our world today offers very many - and somewhat mutually exclusive - answers to this question, this question of who God is, of how he makes himself known to us, of what he asks of us.

It is therefore always important for us - including but not limited to during this holy season of Lent - that we follow the example, as tomorrow's first reading seems to call it, of the faith of St. Peter and his successors, that we join in the faith that is authentically professed by the Church built upon Peter and his successors, down to Pope Benedict XVI. It is important that we share in Peter and the Church's faith in the Most Holy Trinity, and in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son. It is important that we accept and cultivate a relationship with the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, built upon this faith.

During Lent, it would perhaps be good for us to deepen this faith through study - especially of what the Church teaches - and prayer. May God grant us an ever deeper faith in him, and may he grant us to pass one day through that gate whose keys he gave to Peter, to pass from faith to perfect sight.