Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul
First Reading: Acts 12:1-11
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 34:2-9
Second Reading: St. Paul’s 2nd Letter to Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18
Gospel: According to St. Matthew 16:13-19
One of the more well-known concepts and symbols from Eastern religions is the taijutsu [pronounced tie-CHEET-zoo], otherwise known as the yin-and-yang. The symbol has been described as a circle in which two fish, a black fish with a white eye and a white fish with a black eye, are swimming head to tail. The black fish is on the bottom and the white fish is above.
This symbol is a visual description of what is called the “supreme ultimate”, and is certainly a fitting way to look at these two pillars of the Catholic Faith: Two men who were called by Christ to use their vastly different yet interlocking, as we might say today, “skill sets” to spread the Gospel and offer their lives for Jesus and His Church.
This “supreme ultimate” can also relate to the Church herself since the Greek word that most fits its meaning is καθολικός or catholic, universal, all-encompassing. As early as A.D. 110 St. Ignaitus of Antioch used the term catholic in relation to the Church and testifies to the idea that catholic had nothing to do with quantity, but instead denoted quality: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” And yet Peter and Paul were called by Jesus as individuals, but more properly as a team, to use their personal “skill sets” to evangelize the entire world.
Peter, the head of the Church and first pope, was a fisherman who left everything behind to follow Jesus, while Paul was a Pharisee determined to kill Christians until he was blinded by the light of God. One was a worker while the other was a scholar. One was a fixed point in the early Christian community - first in Palestine and then in Rome, while the other was a traveller bringing the Good News to the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean towns in Asia Minor.
Their stories are described in the Acts of the Apostles, written by St. Luke who is assumed to be one of “the seventy” sent out by Jesus as well as a companion of St. Paul on his journeys to evangelize the Gentiles - for whom St. Luke specifically writes his Gospel. Yet, the Acts never mention the deaths of either Peter or Paul, and so we are left with apocryphal accounts or the writings of the early Church Fathers like St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch, among others.
Tradition tells us that they were martyred on the same day during the reign of terror under the Emperor Nero after the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64. St. Peter was crucified upside down, while St. Paul was beheaded. Both of these deaths, although very different, are fitting for each of these two foundations of the Church. Peter, the one who denied Jesus at the crucifixion is himself crucified - asking to be killed upside down as a sign of his unworthiness to die as the Lord did. Paul, the “brains” of the early Church whose theology is second only to that of St. John the Evangelist, is decapitated and thus can spread the Gospel no more.
And yet, it is in these two deaths (and many others) that the words of Tertullian, a Church Father in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries, ring so true: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Perhaps Tertullian had in mind the parable of the mustard seed: so small that it is utterly insignificant - like the lives of two obscure men, who with thousands of others, were trampled under the boot of Rome, yet so packed with potential that if buried in the ground it can grow to unimaginable size - like the Church, now estimated to have over 1.4 billion adherents. And those are just the ones above the ground.
A.M.D.G.
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https://open.spotify.com/show/1GXM65IOxcsVe4IMpaGF7f
The Sunday readings are on a three-year cycle. The current series being shared is Cycle C, there are recordings that were previously already posted to Spotify that include different readings (Cycle B). Enjoy, and thank you for listening!