S. Peter and S. Paul

At the Masses, we had hymns this weekend about the Faith of our Fathers, and about One Church, one Faith, one God, etc. Our veneration today of the prince of the Apostles, and so of his magisterial chair inherited by his Successors through the ages, is a type of reply made to the various rebellions that have sought to erect new Christianities that are independent of that authority of the bishop of Rome.

We remember today, therefore, not only the sufferings of these two martyr Apostles of the first century, but also those of our own English martyrs who protested against the destruction of the English Church in the sixteenth century and worked hard in their own small ways in the ruins to sustain the sacramental life of English Catholics, and to return apostates to communion with Rome.

May the Holy Martyrs of England and Wales pray for us.

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In the last two weeks, I have been speaking about prayer again. I began with the priority of silence, as (first) respect for Him Who dwells in the silence, and (then) as a requirement for the highest form of prayer – meditative prayer. Last week I talked of order or discipline in prayer, by which we assign carefully the times of prayer and establish a consistency and regularity that would confound the enemy of our souls – for the serpent brings chaos, and God brings order, and so everything we do as cooperators with God should reflect order as well.

Today, I want to talk about purity and holiness, because although that may be a separate topic, I think our affinity for sin or our horror at sin affects our lives of prayer.

Consider the holiest of God’s creation – our Blessed Lady, who was a complete stranger to sin. When, in the story of the wedding feast at Cana, she discovered that the wine has run out, she ran to her Son and made her prayer, and she was heard at once. Christ almost seems obliged to His Mother; well, we all feel obliged to our mothers, but there was something greater there. As Catholics, we of course rely upon those prayers of Mary’s, but she also teaches us a lesson here about approaching Christ in prayer with a clean heart. Some of the greatest intercessor Saints of the Church whom we find as sure supports in prayer are men and women who made the sacrifice of their lives to God and are noted for their holiness, S. Anthony of Padua and S. Catherine of Sienna in the distant past, Padre Pio and S. Therese in our own times.

But they are Saints, we are desperate sinners too often. What shall we do, how shall we establish purity? Well, Christ does that, not we, and He gives to us the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Penance. We honestly submit our lives to Christ through His priests, they use the power He once gave them to forgive in his name; we see this munera being given to S. Peter at the bottom of our gospel reading below. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is not popular among Catholics. I understand that. We don’t generally like to share the intimate and shameful details of our lives with a stranger, and to realise that that stranger stands in judgement over us. But such is the order that Christ has established, and we must be careful about rejecting this channel of grace, because He may demand an account of our rejection at at the end.

In the New Testament, the Hebrew idea of confessing is firmly established (Epistle of James, 5: 16), but fundamentalist ideas that we can confess to anybody and not particularly to priests are without foundation. By long tradition, the Catholic confesses to the priests who have been given the legal faculty established by Christ to forgive. Nobody forgives but God, nobody forgives but Christ, and they who are licensed to forgive in His Name following their ordination as priests. This habit of confessing is not meant to be easy, it is meant to develop within us a spirit of humility before God and before His Church, for in humility we shall be saved.

There is always the possibility of choosing a priest confessor if you do not wish to go to your own parish priest, a few miles down the road in every direction, if greater anonymity is desired. For unlike the early centuries of the Church, when public sin was very public indeed as were the consequent penances assigned, these days we are better protected for privacy, and especially by the extraordinary and frequently-attacked good of the Seal of Confession, by which priests will never repeat what they are told in the box.

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“And Jesus came into the quarters of Caesarea Philippi: and He asked His disciples, saying, ‘Whom do men say that the Son of man is?’ But they said, ‘Some John the Baptist, and other some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.’ Jesus saith to them, ‘But whom do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answering, said to him, ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.'”

Gospel of S. Matthew, 16: 13-19 [link]

That’s a singular prerogative – the keys of the kingdom. That effectively makes S. Peter into the prime minister or regent of a spiritual kingdom. That has been historically incorporated into the famous title of the Holy Father in Rome – he is the Vicar of Christ on earth. A vicar exercises authority on the part of a greater power. And so does the Successor of Peter in his legislative acts.

Let’s say some things about the holy Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul. We know them quite well at least from the readings at Mass throughout the year, and better if we study (say) the several letters of S. Paul that have been collected for us in our New Testaments. Peter the impetuous fishermen, quick to jump out of a boat and walk on water by his immense faith, and just as quick to look down, take fright and begin to sink into that water. Paul the loquacious pharisee, whom the Greeks once thought to be the god of communication Hermes (Acts of the Apostles, 14) because of his enthusiastic preaching. Peter whose very shadow brought miracles to those who sought it (Acts of the Apostles, 5), Paul who would walk all the way from Jerusalem to Spain to bring salvation to us non-Jews.

Indeed, Christ chooses the foolish to confound the wise, and the way that He built these two men up – the fisherman and the religious scholar – to become pillars of the Church is certainly not unique. He has done it countless times in the last two thousand years, asking very much of men and women so that they may advance His Gospel. And He will yet do it again.

So, shall you and I be the next Peter or Paul? Shall we work hard, and end our days well, as they did? Here are some of Paul’s final written words, which come to us this weekend as our second reading. As we can see, when he was hauled before the authorities, all his friends abandoned him in his difficulties; he forgives them, and he rejoices that Christ stood by him:

“For I am even now ready to be sacrificed: and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord the just judge will render to me in that day: and not only to me, but to them also that love His coming… At my first answer no man stood with me, but all forsook me: may it not be laid to their charge. But the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me, that by me the preaching may be accomplished, and that all the Gentiles may hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. The Lord hath delivered me from every evil work: and will preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom, to Whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Second letter of S. Paul to S. Timothy, 4: 6-18 [link]