The gates of Hades will not prevail - a sermon for the Solemnity of Peter and Paul, Apostles
Just over a year ago, I joined the Bishop of Southwark and a number of other curates on a visit to the Holy Land. On one of the afternoons, we went to the very spot where today’s Gospel is set – Caesarea Philippi. This site, at the foot of Mount Hermon and about thirty miles from the Sea of Galilee, is now little more than few old caves and a sparklingly clear river, the main inhabited area destroyed in the Six Day War of 1967. It is tempting to see this now picturesque, bucolic, and rather deserted location as the backdrop for Peter’s unusually perceptive declaration that Jesus truly was ‘the Messiah, the Son of the living God’, but whilst that would make a good Disney version of the Gospels, nothing could be further from the truth. For at the time Our Lord walked on the Earth, Caesarea Philippi was an awful lot more than a beauty spot. Caesarea Philippi was very much the administrative capital of the local area, and – as its name suggests – Caesarea – it was very much a place o