Saint Peter, with upside-down cross of his crucifixion and the keys of the kingdom.
Saint Paul, with the sword, both the instrument of his martyrdom, and the Word of God

Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles (go to readings)
Acts 12:1-11
Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18
Matthew 16:13-19

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One of my favorite movies is “Big Fish,” a 2003 Tim Burton movie with Albert Finney, Ewen McGregor, Steve Buscemi, and of course, Helena Bonham Carter, because it’s a Tim Burton movie. In the movie, the main character, Ed Bloom, is in a hospital on his deathbed, and he has a strained relationship with his son, because everything the father has ever said about his own life is encoded in fantastic stories of mythic proportion, which the son feels has kept them from having an honest relationship. But as the movie goes on, you start to wonder if the myth isn’t in fact more fact than myth, and in fact, the distinction is easy to myth (I mean, “miss”!). The common becomes extraordinary, and vice versa. We’re made for stories, and myth makes the stories memorable and inspiring. And even in myth, the truth is just under the surface. An old Irish priest, Fr. McNeil, once told me, “All stories are true. And some of them actually happened.”

Our story as Christians is encapsulated between the inspired books of Genesis and the Apocalypse, our origin story and our destiny. The rest of Scripture and Tradition fills in details, while our Catholic faith informs it so that our lives are our own personal part of this great epic drama of salvation history.

The poet Virgil, in his epic poem, the Aeneid, tells the ancient story of the founding of the city of Rome. Aeneus takes his family and flees from the fall of Troy to start a new city on the Italian peninsula (The Aeneid is from the first century BC, and builds on earlier stories of Aeneus, most popularly Homer’s 8th century BC epic poem, the Iliad). He becomes the ancestor of the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, about whom there are many stories, some more believable than others, sometimes involving being brought up by a mother wolf. Eventually, they were raised as shepherds. When they were grown to adulthood, they one day got into a pastoral altercation with another nearby shepherd, and the brothers decided to build a fortified city. But they could not agree on where.

The Seven Hills of what would become Rome were the general area, but Romulus chose the Palatine Hill, while Remus preferred the Aventine. Each set out to build, and when Remus made fun of Romulus’ defensive walls by having the audacity to jump over them to show their uselessness, Romulus ended the matter by killing his brother. Thus, in a story echoing the tragic account from Genesis, a sort of “original sin” came to Rome by way of fratricide. In his work, The City of God, Saint Augustine, who was well acquainted with Roman myths, would compare the story of Romulus and Remus to that of Cain and Abel.

By the time we come to the mid-fifth century, the era of persecution now mostly a thing of the past, the City of Rome having been substantially Christianized, a newer founding narrative comes into the Roman consciousness: This narrative depicts the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, shepherds, pastors, brothers in the faith and in the Apostolic College, as the founders of the new and eternal Rome, something better and more noble than its pagan origin story. In a homily preached for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in the year 441, Pope Saint Leo the Great says:

That reverence which today’s festival has gained from all the world, it is to be honored with special exultation in our city, that there may be a predominance of gladness in the place where the chief of the Apostles met their glorious end. For these are the men, through whom the light of Christ’s gospel shone on you, O Rome, and through whom you, who was the teacher of error, was made the disciple of Truth. These are your holy Fathers and true shepherds, who built you under much better and happier auspices than they, by whose zeal the first foundations of your walls were laid: and of whom the one that gave you your name defiled you with his brother’s blood. These [the apostles] are they who promoted you to such glory, that being made a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal state [1 Peter 2:9], and the head of the world through the blessed Peter’s holy See, you attained a wider sway by the worship of God than by earthly government. For although you were increased by many victories, and extended your rule on land and sea, yet what your toils in war subdued, is less than what the peace of Christ has conquered.

Thus, we will often see in the ancient documents and doctors of the Church references to “Peter and Paul” as a pair, as brothers in the Christian Faith, as the tradtional foundation of Christendom.

 Like Mary and Martha, the sister virtues of “ora et labora” (to take a traditional Benedictine phrase), “prayer and work,” we see a holy complementarity in this pairing. As Mary is often associated with the virtues of the contemplative life, sitting at the feet of the Lord, and Martha with the virtues of the active life, showing hospitality, caring for the needy, providing food for the hungry, etc., we also see a complementarity in the figures of Peter and Paul. Peter is often associated with the charisms of the hierarchical church, the structure of organization and the sacraments, the noble grandeur of the Mass and the great basilicas and cathedrals, the organization of laws and instructions for order and discipline in the People of God. Meanwhile Saint Paul is more often associated with the charismatic evangelization, going out to the fringes to make disciples, preaching the gospel, as well as the building up of the mystical body of Christ through the spiritual gifts given to its members for serving the community.

This complementarity is not strictly mutually exclusive. Peter also had mystical visions and experiences and the holy charisms of his office received from Jesus and which Peter passed on to his successors. And Paul also taught rules and boundaries for discipline and correction within the Christian communities. And of course, both of them, in Peter’s denial in the garden, and Paul’s zealous persecution of the Church, had stories of their shame and forgiveness that inspired their personal love of the Lord and their mission to spread the gospel.

Sometimes we’ll see Peter and Paul presented as alternative versions of Christianity in tension with each other, because of one moment described in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In this tension, Peter often represents traditionally structured “religion,” while Paul often represents a personal, evangelical “spirituality.” We saw this play out over the last thousand years with Catholics being “the church of the sacraments” and others being “the church of the bible.” But perhaps that’s one of the important dimensions of today’s feast day of these spiritual and apostolic brothers. It’s not “either/or,” but “both/and.” Saints Peter and Paul are together. The Church is both apostolic and charismatic. It is both traditionally structured and spiritually personal. It is both the sacraments and the scriptures. It is both liturgical and evangelical. It is attentive to both the personal believer and the communion of believers, and attentive to its adherence to its supernatural Tradition and its supernatural Great Commission to go out and spread the Gospel.

Our readings contemplate key moments in the holy lives of these Apostles, particularly near their end. After Herod had already martyred Saint James, Saint Peter is arrested, as it says, during the feast of unleavened bread, with intention of having him brought out, presumably for a meaningless trial and tortuous martyrdom, after Passover. So we see Peter, now full of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, courageously living out that love of God and the Church that he was unable to muster in dialogue with Jesus by the seashore, but in which Jesus calls him both to be his shepherd of his flock, and also to follow him, and we see in Saint Peter an echo of the passion of Christ. Saint Paul is writing to Timothy in our second reading, aware, as the Spirit has told him, that his martyrdom is also drawing close. “I… am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith… so that through me the proclamation might be completed, and all the Gentiles might hear it.”

And so to end, I want to contemplate an interesting contrast between Peter and Paul that we can take with us today. I had a gentleman in spiritual direction, a successful business owner, pose this question to me. We have this scene in our first reading from Acts 12, of Peter in prison, and he’s given an out, a way to escape prison. And he goes, and it’s the right thing. But later, in Acts 16, we have the scene of Paul in prison with Silas. And because of an earthquake, the jail’s foundation was broken, the doors and chains came loose, and he’s given an out, a way to escape, but he stays, and it’s the right thing. So, the same or similar situation, and one time the right thing was one thing, and another time the right thing was the almost-opposite thing. So how do we know what we’re supposed to do?

I had to think about that, and we talked, as we exchanged ideas, exploring this question. And what we came up with was very interesting, I think. Our reasoning for asking the question, “Given these sets of circumstances, how do I know what choice to make?” can be a way of asking, “How do I make a rule so that I know what I should do, without having to ask God what I should do?” It’s a subtle attempt to substitute a relationship with God with our independence from him. Certainly, rules and principles of ethical and moral choices are important. But instead of (or in addition to) setting out to create a schema in which we want to always know the right response to every moral dilemma, we should always be turning toward God, after the example of St. Peter and St. Paul, and ask Him, in every circumstance, “God, what do you want me to do? Here I am, Lord. Send me. Lead me. Help me to love you, to listen to you, and to follow you.” Let Him be the writer of your amazing story, so full of miracles it’s almost hard to believe it’s all true.