TRINITY · 29 JUNE & EPIPHANY · 25 JANUARY
Saint Peter & Saint Paul, Apostles
Prince of the Apostles & Apostle to the Gentiles · The Twin Pillars · d. c. 64–68
Peter — PEE-ter · Paul — PAWL · Damascus — dam-AS-kus · Tarsus — TAR-sus · Ostian Way — OS-tee-an · Vatican — VAT-ih-kan · Mamertine — MAM-er-teen
O Almighty God, who by thine Apostles Peter and Paul hast founded thy Church upon the sure word of their apostolic testimony; Grant that thy Church may never fail of that foundation, but may be built upon it until it is gathered in to thee at the last; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
They are the twin pillars of the Church, the two whose names are inseparable from the foundation of the Roman community and from the universal mission of the apostolic witness: Peter (PEE-ter), the fisherman of Galilee who denied three times and was restored three times and to whom the risen Lord said feed my sheep; and Paul (PAWL), the Pharisee of Tarsus (TAR-sus) who persecuted the Church, was struck blind on the road to Damascus (dam-AS-kus), and became the most prolific and theologically profound witness in the New Testament. They differ from each other in almost every respect — in background, in method, in temperament, in the character of their writing and preaching — and they are paired precisely because those differences are what makes the universal mission possible. The fisherman who knew Jesus in the flesh and the scholar who met him in a vision together cover the full range of how the risen Lord makes himself known, and their combined witness constitutes what Paul calls the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.
Peter’s story is the story of the man who was closest to Jesus and most thoroughly broken by the experience. He was there at the Transfiguration, in Gethsemane, in the high priest’s courtyard, at the empty tomb. He denied three times and wept bitterly, and was restored three times on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and preached the first sermon at Pentecost, and baptised the first Gentile in the house of Cornelius, and was imprisoned and miraculously released, and eventually came to Rome, where the tradition is unanimous that he was crucified upside down — at his own request, because he was not worthy to die in the same manner as his Lord — on the Vatican hill. What Peter did between Acts and Rome — how far his mission extended, what communities he founded in Asia Minor and Antioch and Corinth and wherever else the fragments of tradition send him — is largely unknown. The letters that bear his name speak of the dispersed communities of Asia Minor; the tradition places him in Antioch and Corinth before Rome. The full scope of his ministry is known only to God.
Paul’s story is the story of the man who came to faith through catastrophe and never stopped moving. His letters — thirteen in the New Testament, and he wrote more — cover the full range of Christian theology with a passion and precision that has shaped every subsequent account of the Gospel. His three missionary journeys covered Asia Minor, Greece, and eventually Rome; his letters were addressed to communities in Galatia, Corinth, Rome, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica, and Ephesus. He was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, and eventually beheaded on the Ostian Way (OS-tee-an) outside Rome as a Roman citizen entitled to decapitation rather than crucifixion. But what Paul accomplished beyond the record of Acts and the addresses of his letters — the churches he planted on his journeys that did not write back to him, the people he converted whose names history did not preserve, the communities in Spain that the letter to the Romans suggests he intended to visit — is the vast uncharted territory of his obedience to the commission on the Damascus road. He was told he was a chosen vessel, to bear the Name before Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. He bore it, without ceasing, until the sword fell.
Their joint feast on 29 June is the most important of all the Apostolic feasts — the day on which the two supreme architects of the universal Church are commemorated together as the living foundation of the community that has carried the Gospel to every nation since Pentecost. And the Conversion of Paul on 25 January in Epiphany is the complement: the moment of manifestation, the Damascus road, the light that is greater than the sun, the voice saying Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? — the feast of the light breaking through, placed in the season of the light’s disclosure. Between them, 29 June and 25 January frame the year’s understanding of the apostolic mission: the great martyrdom that ends it in testimony, and the great conversion that began it in catastrophe. Peter and Paul stand at the head of the cloud of witnesses as its two most towering figures, and the harvest of their combined mission — in the communities they founded, the letters they wrote, the faith they transmitted to those who came after them — is still being reaped in the life of every church that gathers in the Name of Jesus Christ.
O Almighty God, who by thine Apostles Peter and Paul didst lay the foundation of the universal Church upon the rock of apostolic testimony and the fire of missionary love; Grant that we may stand upon that foundation with the humility of Peter who wept and was restored, and the tenacity of Paul who was struck down and rose again, knowing that neither death nor life shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.