Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul

Imagine you’re the Lord. I know it’s a bit of a strange thing to say. The Gospel needs to be spread over the whole world. Would you have chosen Simon and Saul? And out of all the Twelve, would you have chosen Simon to be the one in charge? Would you have chosen Saul to go across the Roman Empire on various missionary journeys, or one of the other of the Twelve instead?

If we look at all of the Twelve, and the future St Paul, they all have their faults and shortcomings. Perhaps Peter’s problem at times was not so much his impetuosity but rather his inexperience. He would volunteer himself for things, such as walking on the water, or even at the Last Supper saying he was prepared to die for the Lord, but when it came to the crunch, he buckled under the strain. Or what about Saul? He was so zealous and sure of himself as a Pharisee that he was going about rounding up Christians to have them put to death. But God saw great potential in them. He knew them better than they, or anybody else, knew them. And with God’s grace, they did great things for Him, and finally both were martyred in Rome.

Just like the time when Our Lord was going round preaching, so the time of the Apostles was one of miracles great and small. In the first reading we hear that King Herod puts Peter put in prison, with four squads of soldiers to guard him. Herod has already done away with James the brother of John, and now he wants to increase his popularity with the Jewish authorities by going for the top man. But God sends his angel. There’s also a sense of urgency about it. It says that the angel didn’t wake him gently and say, “When you’re ready, we’re going to escape”. Instead, the angel struck him on the side to wake him up. You can imagine Peter waking up, saying: “Ow! What was that for?” But the angel tells him to hurry and get a move on. After they escape from the prison, later on in Acts it says that Peter finds his way to a safe Christian house. Meanwhile, when Herod finds out what has happened, he executes all the soldiers who were supposed to have been guarding Peter.

Later on in The Acts of the Apostles, we also see how the grace of God is at work in showing the authority of St Peter as the one in charge of the Church. First Joseph, who was also called Barnabas, “sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Ananias and Sapphira have evil intentions. They also sell a piece of property, but only give part of the proceeds, lying and telling St Peter they’ve given the whole lot. So God strikes them dead, there and then. Ananias comes in first, lies, and drops dead, and is taken out for burial, and then, three hours later, his wife repeats the same lie and the same thing happens to her (see Acts 5: 1-11). I guess Peter and the wider Church must have, to an extent, gotten used to these interventions by God, to the point they almost became commonplace. It says at the time that many people were being healed and delivered from evil spirits by the apostles as well, and when St Peter passed by, people were happy even just for his shadow to pass over them so they would be healed.

And, of course, we must remember that God was powerfully at work in St Paul’s missionary journeys as well. But the first century was not like in the movies. It was the real world. And in some ways, it was just the same as today. There were those who converted, and those who did not. Those who wanted to hear St Paul speak again, and those who mocked him. There were even those who set about contradicting everything he said out of hatred for Christianity. In different places, God worked in different ways. On one occasion, as St Paul arrives in Malta, he is bitten by a snake. The locals think he must be a murderer, who is now going to be punished with death. But when he doesn’t swell up or drop dead, they then begin to think he must be a god. There was also the problem of disunity, with certain converts teaching a different Gospel to the one proclaimed by St Peter and St Paul. Then there was the problem of Corinth. Corinth was something of a melting-pot of different religions, and St Paul had to write to them a few times to get them to leave certain pagan practices behind and practice their religion pure and undefiled. We are not to drink from the chalice of Christ and from the chalice of demons, so to speak.

We might be tempted to think that if we had amazing miracles taking place today, it would solve all problems and revitalise the Church. But we do have such things taking place: apparitions of Our Lady in places like Lourdes, Fatima and so on. Eucharistic miracles, even as recent as the twenty-first century. There was a video of a claimed miracle I saw some years ago, where the host started hovering over the paten, the metal plate used during Mass. Scrolling down to the comments below, someone wrote something like, I love the oh so Catholic way the priest just continues saying Mass as if this is what always happens. We can perhaps ourselves get so used to the sacred, we don’t even notice, such as at each and every Mass. Heaven touches earth. Bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. We are taken sacramentally to the Last Supper, to Calvary and the Resurrection. Heaven has not abandoned us, and we, in spite of our own shortcomings and failings, have also been chosen by the Lord.

In some ways, the world has completely changed since the times of the Roman Empire, and in other ways, nothing has changed. But God is still with us, and the successor of St Peter is with us, and we still have missionary bishops, like St Paul. And once again, Our Lord sends us out, to the very ends of the earth.

Curious about exploring things further?  If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk