Saint Peter and Saint Paul (at the 10 o'clock Mass)

Even though they share the same Feast Day, Saints Peter and Paul couldn’t have been more different from each other. Peter was a native of Galilee in the land of Israel. Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora, from Tarsus in Asia Minor. Peter was from the country; Paul was from the city. Peter most likely spoke Aramaic as his first language, while Paul spoke and wrote in Greek. Peter was by all accounts a simple fisherman without much formal schooling. Paul was a highly educated Jewish rabbi, and a Roman citizen as well.

The differences don’t stop there. Peter had known Jesus personally during his earthly ministry. Paul knew only the risen Christ, whom he met on the road to Damascus when he was blinded by a great light and heard the Lord speak to him. Peter was the leader of the twelve apostles, while Paul had a very different vocation as Apostle to the Gentiles.

There were also moments of tension between them. In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul recounts that he once confronted Peter to his face in Antioch for drawing back from eating with Gentile converts when he had previously done so.

For all their differences, however, Peter and Paul had much in common. For one things, they both received new names. Paul grew up with the name Saul, and appears to have started using the name Paul after his conversion and baptism. Likewise, Peter was originally known as Simon, and received from Jesus the Aramaic name Cephas, or “Rock,” which in turn translates into Greek as Petros or Peter.

Neither was perfect. Both committed actions that they long regretted. On the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, Peter three times denied being one of his followers. (Incidentally, in today’s Gospel, the point of Jesus asking Peter three times, “Do you love me?” is to give Peter the opportunity to undo his earlier triple denial.) Paul similarly considered himself the greatest of sinners, for before his conversion he had persecuted the Church of God, even standing by and looking on with approval during the stoning of our patron saint, Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

What Peter and Paul have most in common, perhaps, is that Christian tradition is virtually unanimous that they both spent their last days in the city of Rome. Their joint commemoration on June 29th, which dates to the middle of the third century, is based on the memory that they both died in the same persecution, around the year 64 AD.

The New Testament tells us little about the circumstances of either Apostle’s death. The Acts of the Apostles records Paul’s final journey to Rome to be tried and judged as a Roman citizen. But Acts concludes with Paul living in Rome under house arrest with members of the local Christian community visiting him freely and unhindered. Beyond that, Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy alludes his coming death in the well-known words, “I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The New Testament tells us even less about the later life of Saint Peter. Tradition holds that Peter served for a time as bishop of Antioch before finally making his way to Rome. There is, of course, the poignant passage at the end of John’s Gospel in which Jesus foretells the manner of Peter’s death: “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.)
In any case, both Peter and Paul appear to have been residing in Rome when an event of momentous consequences took place in the year 64 during the reign of the Emperor Nero. On July 18th of that year, the Great Fire broke out and raged for five days, destroying large parts of the city.

To deflect rumors that he’d started the fire himself – either in a fit of madness or as part of plan to clear space for his building projects – Nero accused the city’s growing population of Christians of having done so. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, the authorities rounded up a vast multitude of Christians. He writes: “Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”

According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, when the persecution broke out, Peter started to make his escape from the city along the road known as the Appian Way. But he met Jesus coming towards him, again wearing the crown of thorns and carrying the cross. Astounded, Peter asked, “Domine, quo vadis?”—“Lord, where are you going?” To which Jesus responded, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.”

Upon hearing that, Peter knew that he had to return to Rome, come what may. Upon being arrested and sentenced to death by crucifixion, he requested to be crucified upside down, declaring himself unworthy to suffer the same death as his Savior. His body was buried in the cemetery on the Vatican Hill, in the place over which the high altar of Saint Peter’s Basilica now stands.

Paul is believed to have died as a martyr in Rome at the same time, possibly even on the same day. Tradition has it that as a Roman citizen Paul was granted the privilege of a quick and relatively easy death by beheading, and that the execution occurred three miles south of Rome, at a place known as the Three Fountains. Paul’s body was buried nearby at the place over which now stands high altar of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

Here in this church we have a depiction of Saints Peter and Paul in the two stained glass windows in the apse to the right of the high altar. The prominent placement of those windows makes a powerful visual statement that the faith that we believe, practice, and teach here in this parish must be none other than the same faith taught by Saints Peter and Paul: the faith once delivered to the saints and handed down from generation to generation to our own day in the Church. Today, then, we ask Saint Peter and Saint Paul to pray for us, that God may grant us grace, strength, and courage to persevere in this faith until our life’s end.

Proper 8, Year A (at the 8 o'clock Mass)

Matthew 10:40-42

Today at the 10 a.m. Mass we shall be celebrating the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles and Martyrs at Rome. At this Mass, however, we keep the Proper of the Sunday – which, as it turns out, is closely related to Saints Peter and Paul precisely in that it emphasizes theme of apostleship.

This morning’s Collect is the one appointed for Proper 8, the Sunday closest to June 29. Let’s listen again to what it says:

O Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee …

So, on the Sunday closest to the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the Church prays that we may find our unity in the apostolic teaching, and so be built up into a holy temple acceptable to God. What’s more, the Collect for Proper 8 is used throughout the year at Votive Masses of the Holy Apostles.

What, then, are apostles? The Greek noun apostolos comes from the verb apostellō, “to send,” and simply means “one who is sent.” The apostles are those whom the Lord sends.

Today’s Gospel comes at the end of a long discourse in Chapter 10 of Saint Matthew's Gospel in which Jesus sends the Twelve Apostles out on a mission to the cities, towns, and villages of Israel. It begins with Jesus calling them and giving them authority to cast out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and every infirmity. Then he charges them to go out preaching that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. They must thus rely completely on the hospitality of those to whom they are sent.

As for those who offer them such hospitality, at the beginning of today’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” The underlying Jewish concept here is that of a shaliah, a Hebrew word meaning a legal emissary, representative, or agent. The key characteristic of a shaliah is that he is empowered to speak and act in the name of the sender so that in dealing with the shaliah one is virtually dealing with the sender himself.

Now, it just so happens that the standard Greek translation of shaliah is apostolos, or “apostle.” In the New Testament, the apostles are those whom Christ has sent into the world, empowered to act in his name and with his authority. On this basis, he tells them: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” An apostle is thus not only one who has been sent, but is also a representative person, one in whom the sender is virtually present. When we receive the apostle, we receive the one who sent him.

This basic idea grounds the doctrine of apostolic succession. That is, just as Christ sent the apostles into the world in his name, so the apostles eventually transmitted their authority – to preach, to administer the Sacraments, and to govern the Church – to their successors, namely the bishops. And by means of prayer and the laying-on-of-hands, the bishops of the early Church transmitted this authority to their successors, and so on, down through the centuries to the present day.

When I was ordained to the priesthood, twenty-one years ago, I knelt before my bishop as he prayed and laid his hands on my head, and I received the commission to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments as a priest of the Church. But I wasn’t receiving this commission from the bishop per se – or from the local congregation, or even from the Diocese or the Episcopal Church – but ultimately from Christ himself, via a long line of bishops going back to the first apostles.

Similarly, when we receive the bishop in this church, as we shall have the privilege of doing this Fall, we are receiving not merely the Chief Executive Officer of the Diocese, but rather a successor of the apostles, one sent to us by Christ as his emissary, and in whom Christ himself is virtually present in our midst.

By the Sacrament of Holy Orders, bishops, priests, and deacons are the public representatives of Christ in the Church today. Deacons represent Christ the Servant; priests represent Christ the Great High Priest, and Bishops represent Christ the Chief Shepherd.

This is emphatically not to say that ordained ministers infallible or perfect; on the contrary, we are all profoundly unworthy of such a high calling. It is to say that despite our many imperfections and shortcomings, Christ has promised to be present and active in his Church through those whom he has called and sent.

But it doesn’t end there. Through the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist, Christ calls all Christians and sends us into the world in his Name. The reason why God calls some of us into Holy Orders is precisely to build up, strengthen, and equip the laity for their mission and ministries in the world.

So, in a manner corresponding to our many and varied vocations, Christ calls and sends each one of us. As the members of his Body, the Church, we are an apostolic people: his representatives and emissaries in the world. And to each of us alike, Christ addresses his words in today’s Gospel: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.”