'Hear the Word!' by Deacon Charles Paolino: Solemnity of St. Peter and St. Paul

A reading from the Acts of the Apostles

(Chapter 12:1-11)

The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin once asked rhetorically, “How many divisions has the pope?” Stalin and his Soviet Union are only memories now, and the Church is led by its 267th pope, the successor to Saint Peter whom Jesus chose as the first head of the Church. In the passage from the Acts of the Apostles, we read that while the infant Church was under violent attack, Peter was released from jail by divine intervention to continue his mission until the Church had spread as far as Rome. This episode reminds us that the Church is not just a human institution but a visible sign of divine life active in the world. And it isn’t only the pope who has inherited Peter’s mission. We who are members of the Church, the Body of Christ, have been commissioned by baptism to continue building its “divisions” through our witness to the gospel.  
 

Responsorial Psalm

(Psalm 34)

“Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,” the psalmist sings, “and your faces may not blush with shame.” Like Saints Peter and Paul, we are called to profess our faith in God without embarrassment, even—or maybe especially—amid a culture that has increasingly turned away from him.

A reading from Saint Paul’s second letter to Timothy

(Chapter 4:6-8, 17-18)

“The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat,” Saint Paul writes, “and will bring me safe to his heavenly Kingdom.” Paul isn’t expecting the Lord to prevent his death at the hands of Roman authorities, an outcome he clearly anticipates in this letter. Rather, he relies on God to rescue him from the pitfalls of fear, embarrassment, timidity, and indifference. We, too, can ask for God’s help—and depend on it—as we pursue our baptismal mission to witness to Christ and spreads his gospel. 

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew

(Chapter 13:16-19)

As the gospels tell us, the same Peter who made this bold statement of faith—“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”—would later abandon Jesus and deny knowing him. Still later, he would take up leadership of the Church and preach the Gospel despite many efforts to stop him, until he was martyred in Rome. What occurred in between, of course, was the Resurrection and Peter’s encounter with the same risen Christ whom Paul met on the road to Damascus. We are members of the Church because Peter and Paul knew for a fact that God had raised Jesus from the dead and that Jesus is alive among us. Because they knew it, we know it, and we are called to continue their work in spreading that good news.

Painting: Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Jusepe de Ribera, circa 1616, Musée de Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Lectionary for Mass © 1969, 1981, 1997, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (ICEL). All rights reserved.

Charles Paolino is managing editor at RENEW International. He is a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Metuchen.