Liminal Spaces
Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul
“Whatever you loose on earth
will be loosed in heaven.”
Gospel: Mt 16:13-19
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time in airports. If you’ve spent any time in one yourself lately, then you know there’s a strange zone you enter in every terminal, somewhere after making it through the security theater, awkwardly putting your shoes back on and repacking your bag, but before they announce the first call for boarding. In that awkward place, milling around the gate, you’re almost suspended outside of time and space. You’ve left one place behind, but haven’t yet arrived at the next. You’re waiting somewhere between what was and what is yet to come.
The philosophers call this a “liminal space.” Personally, I just call it uncomfortable.
Liminal spaces hold contradictions. At the airport gate, there are children bouncing off the walls and chattering about their vacation. A few feet away, someone’s just said goodbye to a loved one. Now she sits quietly, alone, looking down at the ground. Some travelers are headed toward something new. Others are quietly mourning what they’re leaving behind.
Every journey involves loss. When we leave, we say good-bye to familiar ground, a sense of place, rhythms of life, relationships, even an old version of ourselves. That’s why transition—any real transition—is hard, even when we know we’re heading into something good.
I find myself in a similar space right now, halfway between somewhere and nowhere, as I travel from my former parish (where I celebrated my last Mass this past Sunday) to a new part of the country, a new job, a new home, a new life. Although I’m not in an airport, I’ve had plenty of time to think and pray on the open road, through the wilderness of the mountain West, letting go of what I’m losing and looking forward to what I’m heading toward.
Maybe some of you are in similar spaces. Maybe you’ve recently let go of something: a role, a relationship, an identity, a belief you once held dear. Maybe you’re not sure what comes next. Maybe your heart is holding contradictions, sorrow and hope, joy and grief.
If so, you’re not alone. I’m with you. And the Word of God comes to meets us in this liminal space.
The first reading this past Sunday dropped us into a different kind of waiting room. If you recall, St. Peter was held in prison, with a short and painful future closing in fast. Herod planned to make an example out of him. There was no obvious escape, no clear path forward.
Then, suddenly: light in the night. An angel appears. The chains fall away. And Peter hears a voice: “Get up quickly!”
It’s not a five-point plan. Just the next step. Get up. Get dressed. Get moving.
Honestly, if I were Peter, I think I would have liked a bit more of a detailed itinerary. (Just ask my boyfriend.) I might have asked the angel: “Where exactly are we going, and then where after that?” And I would certainly have been asking myself: “What am I doing? What if this is the wrong choice? What if it’s just my own voice I’m hearing, not an angel at all?”
We’ve all been there. Fear floods the heart with questions, especially in moments of transition and liminal spaces.
But you know, God doesn’t tend to answer those questions. Instead, He offers a loving invitation, with just enough light for the next step forward. Personally, I think he doesn’t like to feed our craving for control by giving us too much information at once. He prefers to draw us deeper into relationship, to walk with us, slowly, patiently, lovingly, until we let go of our fearful grasping for control and learn to hold his hand.
At least, that’s how God is with me, and that’s the pattern I see in Jesus’s relationship with Peter from the beginning. Remember that day by the lake, when Jesus saw him at a distance and came up to His boat? He said: “Come, follow me” (Mt 4:19). Not much of a plan. Just an invitation, leading step by step into an unbelievable adventure.
In the Gospel this Sunday, we see the climax of that story: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18). I hear more than just the voice of God commanding in those words. It’s the voice of Jesus, speaking to a friend, calling him by name, empowering him for the mission, unbinding the chains of fear in his heart.
So much has been made over the centuries of the so-called “power of the keys.” From where I’m standing, Jesus did not give this authority to his Church in persona Petri so that the Church could lock people out of Heaven. What Jesus bestows on Peter is his own authority as Messiah, as liberator, as Savior, so that he can continue Jesus’s mission: “to bring good news to the afflicted, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners” (Isa 61:1), to unlock the doors that fear and shame have slammed shut.
That’s the real measure of ecclesiastical authority. Because the Church, at her best, is not a gatekeeping institution, but a liberating force. Her mission isn’t to police the margins, but to meet people there, in the liminal spaces between slavery and freedom, despair and hope, shame and self-acceptance—to break their chains, and to whisper to the wounded: “Get up and go. The door is open.”
After all, Christ didn’t wait for Peter to become perfect before He called him. He called him while he was still figuring it out. He loved him through his fear, his denial, his questions. And then He sent him to love and free others in the same way.
Paul, too, says today: “I am already being poured out like a libation” (2 Tim 4:6). He responded to a similar invitation from Jesus, to pour himself out in order to set others free. He knew what he was called to, and he didn’t hold back.
That’s the invitation before us today. Right here. Right now. In whatever moments of transition, whatever strange, liminal spaces of “already” and “not yet” where the Word of God is coming to meet you.
So let’s stop waiting for perfect clarity.
Let’s stop waiting to become someone else.
Let’s trust that love is already calling our name.
The chains may still feel heavy. The gates may look solid. But I promise you, they will open.
Let’s take the next good step.
Don’t be afraid to lose what must be lost.
Christ is calling us onward.
And the journey—your journey, and mine—has only just begun.
Reflection Questions:
Where in your life do you feel “in between”?
What fears or doubts are holding you captive right now?
What would it look like to take one small step toward freedom, even without knowing the full plan?