Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church

Homily for June 29, 2008
Liturgical Year A- Cycle II
Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul
By Fr. John Carney
 Topic:Solemnity of Peter and Paul
+  +  +
Today we celebrate the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul.  Their feast day is the 29th of June.  Whenever that feast day falls on a Sunday, we use this solemnity instead of what would have been the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time.
 
How many apostles are there?  (Congregation replies twelve.)  Thirteen.  I never thought about this before.  Clearly, Paul is an apostle.  The Scripture tells us so.  He was called.  He had all the marks of an apostle:  he was summoned, Christ gave him authority, and he calls himself an apostle.  That makes it official.  There are actually 13 apostles.  Interesting.  Of course, Judas betrayed Christ and was removed but Mathias replaced him.  In any case, we take some time today to think about these two great pillars of the Church, Peter and Paul.  We say our Church is one holy, catholic, and apostolic church and it is one and holy and catholic because it is apostolic.  That’s the way Jesus planned it.  He set this Church up to work that way. 
 
I feel like I know these two men and I look forward to meeting them.  Isn’t that a wonderful thought about heaven, that we’ll meet all these people one day?  I think I will recognize Peter and Paul from knowing them in the Scriptures.  We know a lot about them.  We, as Catholics, know a lot about them.  Don’t let anyone tell you, we don’t know the Bible.  On Sundays, we hear the New Testament on our three year cycle.  We hear all of the pertinent parts of the Scriptures every year.
 
Peter--we know a lot about Peter.  We know he was a leader.  It was clear that even before Christ met him, he had that leadership charisma about him.  Other men followed him and other people followed him.  He was, of course, a fisherman.  He was not wealthy.  Indeed, we know his name.  His name was Simon bar Jonah, which means son of John.  Today, his name would be Simon Johnson.  Later, his name would be changed for a very good reason.  I don’t know why but I envision Peter as being rather tall, dark and with a beard.  He was temperamental, wasn’t he?  He didn’t know himself as well as he thought he did.  “I will never deny You.”  Right Peter!  “Before the cock crows, you will have three times denied me, Peter.”  Yet we know he was a man of passion and feeling.  One of the most vivid pictures I have of Peter is from El Greco’s painting, “The Tears of Peter” “Las Lágrimas de Pedro”.  It’s in the museum in Toledo, Spain, where, of course, El Greco painted.  If you know El Greco, he always painted these very long figures, very distinct.  You could tell an El Greco painting from a mile away.  That is El Greco.  I’ll never forget, I stood in front of that painting for about 15 minutes.  It is just Peter crying and you can see the weeping tears after he realized that he had betrayed Christ and denied Him.  Fabulous.  It tells you something about the man.  Of course, over the centuries, we get opinions about Peter and Paul from art as well as from scripture.
 
We know Peter was appointed as the head of the apostles.  We heard that today in the Gospel.  “Who do men say that I am?”  Peter is always the spokesman; he’s always the first to speak.  One of the apostles says, “Some say you are Elijah or Moses, or one of the prophets.”  “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Anointed, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Then Jesus tells us, “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, for no man has told you this but my heavenly Father.  You are Peter”, meaning rock, petra, “and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  I give you the keys of the kingdom.  Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.  Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  Powerful commission there.  There is no doubt of what that means.  Peter.  Peter went on, of course, to be a martyr.  He was crucified in Rome under the persecution of the Emperor Nero in the year 64.  The other Saint that we remember today, Saint Paul, followed him in martyrdom three years later. 
 
Now, Saint Paul is an interesting character.  I think I’ll know Paul as soon as he says something in heaven.  Paul, obviously, had great leadership.  He was a Pharisee and he was known to persecute Christians.  In fact, at the scene in the Acts of the Apostles where the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen the Deacon was stoned to death, it said, “Paul was there and he approved of these things”. 
 
Paul, a leader, was in route to Damascus to persecute the nascent Christian community and of course, there, he encountered Christ.  He was struck by a bright light, knocked down, and blinded.  He heard the words, “Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?”  He said, “Who are you sir that I might know?”  He said, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting.”  Saul was persecuting the Church, which means he was persecuting Christ, for Christ and the Church are one.  From that experience, Paul changed.  He was converted.  He joined, he encountered the Christian community in Damascus as a friend, his sight was restored and he immediately went out on a mission to spread the Gospel. 

God must have fused him with great knowledge.  I am always amazed at the depth of the theology of Paul.  Read his letters.  They are unbelievably detailed and beautiful in their theology.  Without Paul, we wouldn’t know God and Christ near as well as we do.  He taught us so much in his letters and his letters are brilliant.  You can imagine that they have been translated “X” times over the 20 centuries.  In his own native language, you can imagine the brilliance of this man Paul.  Paul tells us he wasn’t much of a preacher.  I think we call him a great preacher mostly because of his written testimony.  He also describes himself as not much to look at.  We get the impression he was a tad bit on the ugly side.  I always think of him like a Rembrandt.  I don’t know if you have ever seen Rembrandt’s self-portrait but he wasn’t real cute.  There are some paintings of Paul that depict him as not very handsome.  Paul was a great man.  Of course, he was a tentmaker by trade.  Later, by the way, after much of his missionary work was done, he went to Jerusalem and there attended what we call today the Council of Jerusalem.  He met with Peter, James, John, and all those he considered to be important.  He received their approval.  Just as Peter was sent to be the apostle to the Jews, Paul was sent to be the apostle to the Gentiles.
 
Paul also went to Rome.  Rome was the center of the world at the time and it became the center of the Holy Church.  Paul was beheaded there in 67 AD.  Paul was a Roman citizen and because of that he escaped the dreaded persecution of the cross and he was given the lesser dreaded persecution of being beheaded.  I’m not too keen on either one of those choices, are you?
 
We remember them today, Peter and Paul.  How blessed we are.  They were apostles.  They were summoned, appointed, and given authority by Christ.  You know, I always have to go to the dictionary.  I used the Oxford dictionary this time.  To “be summoned” means to call upon for a specified action.  Such as, you’re summoned to appear in court or you’re summoned to appear for jury duty.  Christ summoned these apostles.  He appointed them.  To be appointed means to fix or set officially, to name officially.  That’s what Jesus did with the apostles.  Condoleeza Rice was appointed as Secretary of State by the president.  She was named officially.  The apostles were named officially by Jesus.  He gave them authority.  I looked that up in the Oxford dictionary.  Listen to this.  “Authority: the power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.”  Oooh, that doesn’t sound American.  “The power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.”  Jesus gave authority to these pillars of His Church, the apostles.  He even changed their names.  Name-changing meant mission-changing.  We even see that in monastic houses today.  When a man or a woman becomes a monk, his or her name is changed.  They took on a new name because they have a new mission:  to be a monk, to pray for the Church, to do work for the Church.  Abraham and Sarah weren’t named Abraham and Sarah.  Their names were Abram and Sarai but when God called them to be the parents of the world, if you will, and they are, of course, the father and mother in faith of Jews, Christians, and Moslems, He changed their names to Abraham and Sarah.  He changed Jacob’s name to Israel after Jacob encountered God.  He wrestled with Him.  Israel means he who wrestles with God.  Therefore, He gave him a name change, Jacob.  He changed Simon Johnson’s name to Peter, petra, rock.  He changed Saul’s name to Paul, all indicative that they were given this mission by God.  He named them apostles.  “Apostle”, it means in the Greek, one who is sent on a mission.  A mission to spread the Gospel to us, to lead and to teach.
 
Why are there apostles?  Because God loves us and He knew we needed leaders as sheep need shepherds.  A few months ago, someone objected to being called a sheep.  “I don’t like being called a sheep,” she said.  I said, “Well, we are like sheep.” Jokingly I told her, “They nibble themselves into trouble.”  You know, sheep just go on their own and get into big messes in their lives.  Without a shepherd, without leadership, we would have been scattered and lost, driven apart by everyone’s different opinion and heresy and we would have lost contact with Christ and with each other centuries ago.  The word anarchy means no leader.  Anarchy:  the absence of any form of authority, the absence of any cohesive principle such as a common standard or purpose; disorder and confusion.  Anarchy.  That’s what you have when you don’t have any leadership. 
 
We thank God for the apostles, those who are sent, given authority, summoned and appointed to pass on God’s word to us.  That’s why we are one holy, catholic, and apostolic church 20 centuries later.  Without the apostles, we would not be here.  We would not know Jesus Christ.  We would not be.  The apostles still guide us through their successors, the bishops and the Holy Father.  They have a great responsibility to teach us and to lead us.  We have an equally great responsibility to listen and to respond.  How blessed we are to know Peter and to know Paul.  How blessed we are.