Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul, Apostles
June 29, 2014

     Peter and Paul.  That these two saints should not only be celebrated together as they are each year, but that their names should be spoken together in the same breath – as if there were a hyphen between them or as if they were twins – is nothing short of amazing.  Two more strikingly different people – in personality, in temperament, in background -- would be hard to find.  They had so very little in common, those two – Peter: unlettered, rough-edged Galilean fisherman, impetuous, cowardly, lovable, believable; Paul: sophisticated, Greek-speaking Roman citizen, Pharisee, zealous, courageous, consistent. How in the world did these two end up sharing a feast?  How is it that they are almost inseparable when we think of the earliest beginnings of the Church?

     The answer to that question lies in the title we give to both of them: Apostle. Apostle, as you know, means ‘one who is sent, and, whatever their differences – and they were certainly considerable – Peter and Paul had in common the fact that they were sent – sent to preach, to give witness, to make their sender known and loved.

     So they were sent, and we know why they were sent, but another question arises: why were they sent! And that takes us into the ever mysterious territory of divine choice which is so different from human choice. This much is certain: if, in choosing his apostles, Jesus had employed the services of one of today’s “head-hunter” firms, he would never have come up with these two!  Peter, the good-hearted but impetuous ‘waffler’ – hot one moment, cold the next; on-again, off-again; faith-filled but flighty; Paul, the fiery zealot, the persecutor, hot in pursuit of the heretical Christian movement, bent with laser-like zeal on its quick destruction.  No head-hunter would ever have come up with these two!

     But look what they did when grace did its work.  The post-Pentecost Peter no longer ran for cover when the going got rough: he boldly preached and professed the very Master he had once denied even knowing.  Throwing caution to the wind, he put his life squarely on the line for the Master.  And Paul?  The converted, post-road-to-Damascus Paul saw his fiery zeal to wipe out the followers of Christ transformed into a consuming passion to make that same Christ known and loved no matter what.  In less than three decades these two unlikely apostles helped turn a tiny, ragged, disorganized movement in a backwater outpost of the Roman Empire into a powerful religious force that crossed over into North Africa and swept up from Palestine, across Asia Minor, through Greece, all the way to Rome.

     If there is one thing to be learned from all this it has to be the incredible power of God’s grace.  Peter and Paul will forever be perfect “poster boys” for the power of God’s grace which invariably works its greatest wonders in human weakness.  For that reason, the two of them are worthy patron saints for a Church that is grace-filled and divinely inspired, yes, but oh, so very human. They are patron saints, too, for each of us who struggle with weakness, who all-too-easily lose our way, and stumble along the way, but who dearly want to follow and, in our better moments, do.

     And for every one of us who wants to follow, there is one question we must answer before all others.  It’s the question Jesus put to his followers one day while they walked along a dusty road near Caesarea Philippi, the question we heard in today’s gospel -- this question: “You, who do you say that I am?”

     “You, who do you say that I am?”  Peter answered that question with words not his own: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”  The words came from his mouth but, as Jesus told him, they really came from God.  But I think that the day Peter really answered that question came long years afterwards on the day when, according to tradition, he colored and soaked with his own blood the earth on a Roman hillside called Vatican, stretching out his arms to die upside-down on a cross. That was the moment when Peter really answered the question, “Who do you say that I am?”

     And Paul?  Paul’s whole life as an apostle became one long response to the question, “Who do you say I am?”  To use his own words, Paul answered it “in season and out of season, in labors and imprisonments, in beatings and stonings, in perils and dangers, in shipwrecks and toils, in hardships and many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst and frequent fastings, in cold and in nakedness.” And finally, he answered it definitively one fateful day near the Ostian gate just outside the wall of Rome when he shed his blood in witness to the Christ he had once persecuted.

     Peter and Paul.  Two more different people would be hard to find.  Two less likely apostles would be hard to find.  But grace works wonders. It did for them; it does for us, because, my friends, the question now comes to us: and you, who do you say that I am? We answer it every time we gather in faith around this altar; and we answer it when we leave this place to live ‘out there’ what we’ve done ‘in here.’

Father Michael G. Ryan