Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul
Acts 12:1–11 / Ps. 34:2–9 / 2 Tim. 4:6–8, 17–18 / Mt. 16:13–19
The celebration of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul is a celebration of the Church in its rich diversity and fullness.
St Peter’s deliverance from jail is a reminder of the deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt and the deliverance of the Christian from sin and death through faith in the Risen Lord.
These two apostles are celebrated together, even though they both have other separate feasts on the universal calendar namely, the conversion of St. Paul and the Chair of St Peter.
Peter has become a symbol of the sacramentality and institutionality of the Church while, Paul has come to symbolise the dynamic nature, creativity and charismatic side of the Church. Both lived lives that were full of paradoxes, the “wanting to do good but ending up doing the opposite”, the “willing spirit and the weak flesh”. They thus needed deliverance on many levels. For both, there was more than one prison to be set free from. While both Peter and Paul today join their voices to that of the psalmist in giving praise and thanks to God for his deliverance from prison and death, both have also learnt to offer up their lives as a willing sacrifice for the sake of the gospel.
Like most of present-day disciples, these men were full of paradoxes. Peter generously gave up all things, yet he also selfishly asked “What are we going to get for all this?” (Mt 19:27). At the Last Supper he swears never to deny Christ and yet moments later he swears to a servant that he has never known Jesus. In the garden of Gethsemane, he loyally resists the arrest of Jesus but in the end, he runs away with the others. Yet to this very Peter and to him alone did Jesus say: “You are the rock on which I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18).
Paul too, entrusted with the message of salvation for the gentiles, had to face many conflicts within himself, until he heard the Lord saying to him: ” My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9). This grace enabled him to pour out his life as libation, to run the good race and to persevere to the end.
Thus, both Peter and Paul were the recipients of extraordinary graces and suffered many hardships for Christ, culminating in laying down their lives for Him in the martyrs’ death.
Their lives were messy, chaotic at times, beset by internal and external conflicts and yet, by the grace that they both recognized in our readings, they remained single minded in their reveal to follow the master and to preach the message of salvation. It is the triumph of this very grace of God in them that we celebrate and the results thereof is that we are here as present day disciples of Jesus Christ, called to fight the fight and to run the race in our own time, called to make our own confession of faith in Christ and to witness to that faith, trusting all the while in the immense grace and mercy of God that is as available to us today as it was to Peter and Paul during their lifetime. An important aspect of that grace and mercy is the fact that we are able to call upon their intercession and to rely on their assistance as we fulfil our own mission in the church and in the world.
Lastly, the celebration of this solemnity also signifies the Catholic fullness, the combination of truths, rather than the exclusion of one truth and the overemphasis of the other. The combination of Peter and Paul, this “and” of Catholicism, brings home to me the rich depth and diversity of our faith. We need Peter and we need Paul. The picture and mission is only complete when we have charismatic missionary zeal combined with magisterial authority and sacramental ministry. The Protestant theologian Karl Barth called this “the damned catholic and” in contrast to the reformists’ restrictive “only“, like faith only, scripture only, grace only. Catholics affirms faith and works, Scripture and tradition, grace and works, Peter and Paul.
One author puts it thus: When one rejects the “either/or” mentality and adopts in its place a Catholic “both/and” attitude, we are admitted into the fullness and richness of faith. It is here, in the world of “Catholic Ands,” that we always find “more Christianity,” rather than less, and the plan of God for his people takes on its full meaning.
May Saints Peter and Paul pray for us that we may grow in this fullness of God’s plan and in our own response to the abundance of God’s grace.