Dear friends,

Saints Peter and Paul, whose feasts we celebrate this weekend, are perhaps two of the greatest apostles, though called under different circumstances. Their feast, this year, is one of those liturgical feasts that replaces what should have been the ordinary Sunday of the Year, in this case, the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C.

But who are these two apostles? Peter was a simple fisherman from Galilee who plied his trade around the Sea of Galilee and the hilly countryside that surrounded it. Like many fishermen of his time, he had a very basic education, and his first language was Aramaic. Paul, on the other hand, was a smart and highly educated university graduate from the city of Tarsus, the capital of the Roman province of Cilicia, located on the southeast coast of what is today known as Turkey. He was a city dude. He wrote and spoke fluent Greek. Also, his family seemed to have been wealthy, and his father was a Roman citizen.

Regarding his religious affiliation, he was a self-declared zealous Pharisee who kept the Jewish Law impeccably. And so, if the two of them had met before they encountered Jesus, they would have had little in common to talk about. And yet, this weekend, the universal church throughout the world celebrates their joint feast days. What happened? JESUS! Yes, it was Jesus who brought them together and touched their lives and bound them together inseparably, though in very different and unique ways.

Peter heard the call of Jesus by the shore of the Sea of Galilee as he engaged in his daily job of fishing, while Paul heard it somewhere in the vicinity of Damascus, where he was on his mission to destroy people like Peter who were proclaiming Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah. When he encountered Jesus, however, he never looked back.

Jesus, when entrusting the Church to Peter, called him the rock upon which his church would be built. On the other hand, after Paul’s encounter with Jesus, Jesus called him to be the apostle to the non-Jewish world, the Gentiles. In executing this call and mandate, each of them gave their lives to the Lord; Peter was crucified head down, while Paul was beheaded like John the Baptist. They were both executed in Rome, a long way from Galilee and from Tarsus. Their tombs have been places of pilgrimage to this day, and two of Rome’s four great Basilicas are built over their tombs, Saint Peter’s in the Vatican and Saint Paul’s outside the walls. I was so fortunate some years back to have had the opportunity to celebrate Mass at the tomb of Peter in Rome alongside Cardinal Robert Sarah.

Dear friends, we celebrate their joint feast this weekend, in thanksgiving to God for their generous and courageous witness to their faith in the Lord. From its very beginnings, the church has worked hard to remain true to the faith of the first apostles, especially of these two great apostles, Peter and Paul. That is why we speak of the faith as apostolic.

Today, we too are called to be true to the faith as lived and articulated by those two great pillars of the church. This apostolic faith they exemplified is reflected in a special way in the New Testament. We keep returning to the gospels, letters, and other books of the New Testament so as to be inspired by the faith of those early preachers of the gospel.

Dear friends, as we celebrate the solemnity of these great apostles this weekend, let us particularly pray for our holy father Pope Leo XIV as he continues the work of shepherding the Church entrusted to him.

Through the intercession of Saints Peter and Paul, may the Lord bless him with good health, wisdom, and peace.

I love you!

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