I have always felt the more salient questions here are who are the individuals Peter is being consecrated to feed and what is He being charged and empowered to feed them with? Sheep and lambs are the near universal symbol of inherent vulnerability so Jesus imparts to Peter the universal the papal mission to feed the "hungry" like me who are by the design of our Creator, and by necessity, inherently vulnerable and of whom some of us are willing to embrace their inherently vulnerable state in an unqualified surrender to embodiment of the Word of God Himself who is Jesus our Savior.
A second and even more important inquiry is, "what is this Food that Peter and his successors have at their immediate disposal and are empowered to distribute when feeding the vulnerable who are willing" to receive It. The hungry like me, must first be aware that we are hungry and in need of sustenance. There are some who are so invulnerable to God they may be starving for sustenance, and not be aware of it at all. These are not lambs or sheep. Those who know they are hungry and embrace in their vulnerability to God, even slightly, are those that can be fed. What is needed for their sustenance is one "Food" only. To identify this Food I have to go way back to the memory of my childhood traditional Catholic catechesis to find It. Peter and his successors are charged and empowered to initiate in the proposed and the established Faithful communion with our Triune God, which is not simply their teaching and preaching upon the message of the Gospel but the encouragement to all that the mutual union between God and men surrendered by our first parents has been restored as a result of the Salvific acts of Jesus. Just as the eating of food for physical sustenance is the embodiment of that food, so too is our communion with God a mutual and exquisitely unqualified bond of mutual embodiment engaged between Us. This is why this state, when we allow it to occur within us, is called COmunion by our Church rather than a the state of only "union" with God to which we often, at times, seem to erroneously defer. It is from within individual entry into our unique disposition of Communion with God that all true knowledge ( in the absolute and utterly compelling sense found throughout Scripture) and wisdom emerge. It is not difficult either to imagine why Jesus would charge Peter and his successors with this single mission which binds all faithful created beings as members of the Communion of Saints since participation here on earth in our destiny of Sainthood can only occur with the embodiment of our God within us where He becomes domiciled as He is welcomed there.
I have always felt the more salient questions here are who are the individuals Peter is being consecrated to feed and what is He being charged and empowered to feed them with? Sheep and lambs are the near universal symbol of inherent vulnerability so Jesus imparts to Peter the universal the papal mission to feed the "hungry" like me who are by the design of our Creator, and by necessity, inherently vulnerable and of whom some of us are willing to embrace their inherently vulnerable state in an unqualified surrender to embodiment of the Word of God Himself who is Jesus our Savior.
A second and even more important inquiry is, "what is this Food that Peter and his successors have at their immediate disposal and are empowered to distribute when feeding the vulnerable who are willing" to receive It. The hungry like me, must first be aware that we are hungry and in need of sustenance. There are some who are so invulnerable to God they may be starving for sustenance, and not be aware of it at all. These are not lambs or sheep. Those who know they are hungry and embrace in their vulnerability to God, even slightly, are those that can be fed. What is needed for their sustenance is one "Food" only. To identify this Food I have to go way back to the memory of my childhood traditional Catholic catechesis to find It. Peter and his successors are charged and empowered to initiate in the proposed and the established Faithful communion with our Triune God, which is not simply their teaching and preaching upon the message of the Gospel but the encouragement to all that the mutual union between God and men surrendered by our first parents has been restored as a result of the Salvific acts of Jesus. Just as the eating of food for physical sustenance is the embodiment of that food, so too is our communion with God a mutual and exquisitely unqualified bond of mutual embodiment engaged between Us. This is why this state, when we allow it to occur within us, is called COmunion by our Church rather than a the state of only "union" with God to which we often, at times, seem to erroneously defer. It is from within individual entry into our unique disposition of Communion with God that all true knowledge ( in the absolute and utterly compelling sense found throughout Scripture) and wisdom emerge. It is not difficult either to imagine why Jesus would charge Peter and his successors with this single mission which binds all faithful created beings as members of the Communion of Saints since participation here on earth in our destiny of Sainthood can only occur with the embodiment of our God within us where He becomes domiciled as He is welcomed there.