The Two Apostles and the One Faith
MASS Mihi autem nimis
LESSON Acts 5:12-16
GOSPEL St Matthew 19:27-29
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
On this sixth day within the Octave of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the Church keeps us spiritually within Rome, near the two apostolic tombs that have sanctified the Eternal City with their blood. The sacred liturgy will not allow us to regard their martyrdom merely as an event of the past. Throughout this Octave she returns again and again to the confession, authority, preaching and sacrifice of these two men because in them we see the divinely established form of the apostolic Church: one in faith, ordered by authority, universal in mission, and fruitful through sacrifice.
Peter and Paul were profoundly different men. Peter was a fisherman of Galilee; Paul had been formed in the schools of Jerusalem. Peter had followed Our Lord from the beginning of His public ministry; Paul encountered the risen Christ only after the Ascension. Peter had heard the Sermon on the Mount and witnessed the Transfiguration; Paul received the Gospel by a special revelation. Peter was sent in a particular manner to the circumcision; Paul became the Apostle of the Gentiles. Peter appears impulsive, direct and paternal; Paul analytical, learned and inexhaustibly missionary.
Yet the Church never sets them against one another. She unites them in one solemnity, one Octave and one martyrdom. Their diversity did not produce different faiths, rival churches or competing gospels. It revealed the inexhaustible riches of the one apostolic mission.
Peter represents the principle of unity and visible order. Paul represents the expansive force of missionary doctrine. Peter possesses the keys. Paul carries the Gospel to the nations. Peter strengthens his brethren. Paul labours that the faith may be preached “unto the ends of the world.” Peter guards the household. Paul enlarges it. Peter stands upon the rock. Paul builds upon the foundation already laid. Their missions differ, but their doctrine is one; their authority differs in mode, but their apostolate proceeds from the same Christ; their paths are distinct, but they meet at the same altar of sacrifice.
This complementarity appears in the very history of their martyrdom. Around the year 67, during the persecution of Nero, Peter was crucified upon the Vatican Hill, humbly requesting that he be placed head downwards because he considered himself unworthy to die in precisely the same manner as his Lord. Paul, as a Roman citizen, was led outside the city along the Ostian Way and beheaded with the sword. One died upon the cross, the other beneath the sword; one within sight of the Vatican, the other beyond the walls. Yet their blood mingled mystically in the soil of Rome, consecrating that city as the centre from which the Gospel would radiate throughout the world.
The power of Rome did not convert the Apostles. The martyrdom of the Apostles converted Rome. The Empire imagined that it was extinguishing two troublesome voices; God was enthroning two princes of His Church. As the Gradual declares: “Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth: they shall remember Thy name, O Lord.” Nero possessed armies, palaces and tribunals. Peter and Paul possessed the faith. Nero’s empire has vanished; the creed preached by the Apostles remains.
The Church, therefore, does not measure divine fidelity by earthly success. Sometimes God rescues His servants from persecution; sometimes He glorifies them by allowing persecution to consume them. What matters is not whether the Apostle escapes, but whether the Faith survives. The servant may be bound; the word of God is not bound. The preacher may be silenced; the doctrine he has handed down continues to speak. The body may be buried; the apostolic mission remains living within the Church.
Authority in the Church is therefore inseparable from truth. Peter is not blessed because he has produced an original theological insight. He is blessed because he has received and confessed what the Father revealed. His authority is given for the guardianship, confirmation and transmission of that divine revelation. The keys are not bestowed so that the content of the Faith may be altered, but so that the household of the Faith may be governed. The rock does not invent the building; it supports what Christ builds upon it.
Paul’s apostolate demonstrates the same truth from another direction. His extraordinary missionary energy was never an excuse for doctrinal innovation. He crossed seas, entered cities, disputed in synagogues, preached in marketplaces, suffered beatings, imprisonment, shipwreck and rejection; yet everywhere he delivered what he himself had received. “Therefore, brethren,” he writes to the Thessalonians, “stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.”
That sentence describes the apostolic constitution of the Church. The Faith is received before it is preached. It is handed down before it is explained. It is guarded before it is applied. Tradition is not an optional ornament added to the Gospel; it is the divinely appointed means by which the Gospel reaches every generation intact.
Peter and Paul did not travel throughout the world asking each local community to invent Christianity anew. They transmitted one doctrine, one sacrifice, one priesthood, one moral law and one hope of eternal life. The Gospel was capable of entering Greek, Roman, Jewish and barbarian societies precisely because it did not belong to any one of them. It judged every culture because it came from God. It purified what was good, condemned what was evil and elevated what was merely natural.
The modern world speaks continually of adaptation, development and renewal, but often means by these words the abandonment of what was received. The apostolic principle is different. True development unfolds what is already contained in the deposit of faith; it does not contradict it. Authentic pastoral care applies the truth to souls; it does not conceal the truth from them. Legitimate authority protects the inheritance; it does not squander it.
There can be no Church without the Faith, and there can be no Faith without Tradition. Not because Tradition stands above Christ, but because Christ chose to give Himself to the world through apostolic transmission. We know His words because they were handed down. We possess the Scriptures because the Church received, guarded and identified them. We have the Sacraments because the Apostles transmitted the rites and the authority by which they are conferred. We offer the Holy Sacrifice because the command given in the Upper Room has passed through the hands of bishops and priests from generation to generation.
To despise Tradition is therefore not to escape into a supposedly purer Christianity. It is to sever oneself from the historical means by which Christianity has reached us at all.
Peter and Paul also teach us that fidelity to Tradition does not produce sterility. Paul’s missionary fruitfulness sprang from the certainty of what he had received. Because he knew the Gospel was true, he could preach it without apology. Because he did not regard doctrine as negotiable, he could endure persecution for it. Because he sought the conversion of nations rather than the approval of nations, he changed the world.
A Church uncertain of her doctrine cannot evangelise. She may conduct dialogues, issue reports, establish commissions and organise assemblies, but she cannot speak with apostolic authority. Men do not die for provisional opinions. Nations are not converted by ambiguity. Saints are not formed by endlessly revised pastoral strategies. The world is conquered for Christ only by that faith which Peter confessed and Paul preached: “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Yet the missions of the Apostles also warn us against false oppositions. Authority must not be separated from Tradition, as though obedience required the acceptance of novelty. Nor may Tradition be separated from the apostolic structure of the Church, as though fidelity required contempt for the offices established by Christ. Peter without Paul can be caricatured as authority without missionary truth; Paul without Peter as zeal without visible unity. But the Church gives us Peter and Paul together.
We must therefore pray for a restoration not merely of external order, but of apostolic order: authority serving revelation, mission proceeding from doctrine, unity founded upon truth, and discipline protecting the supernatural life of souls. The answer to the present crisis is neither institutional submission divorced from the Faith nor private judgement divorced from the Church. It is the reunion of all things in the apostolic principle expressed by today’s liturgy: the Church following in all things the teaching of those from whom she received the right ordering of religion in the beginning.
At this Mass, Peter and Paul are not distant historical figures. Their names stand at the head of the Apostles in the Roman Canon. The same Sacrifice that sustained their ministry and crowned their martyrdom is made present upon our altar. The Preface asks the everlasting Shepherd not to desert His flock, but to keep it under constant protection through the blessed Apostles whom He appointed as pastors and vicars of His work.
That prayer is especially urgent today. We ask not merely that the institutions of the Church survive, but that they fulfil their supernatural purpose. We ask that Peter’s voice may once again resound clearly with his confession at Caesarea Philippi. We ask that Paul’s trumpet may again summon the nations to repentance and faith. We ask that bishops govern as guardians of the deposit, that priests preach without fear, and that the faithful hold fast to what they have received.
The iron gates of the world appear formidable. The Church is surrounded by pressures, errors and adversities. Yet today’s Epistle reminds us that iron gates can open of themselves when God wills. The gates of hell possess no such promise of victory. Christ did not promise that the Church would be spared persecution, confusion or treachery. He promised that she would not be overcome.
Let us remain, then, with Peter upon the rock and with Paul upon the missionary road. Let us confess what Peter confessed, believe what Paul preached, preserve what both handed down, and be willing, if necessary, to suffer for what they sealed with their blood. For the Faith is not ours to revise. It is a treasure entrusted to us, that we may hand it on entire to those who come after us.
“Thou art Peter: and upon this rock I will build My Church.” Upon that rock, with the doctrine of Paul sounding throughout the nations, the Church remains. Kingdoms rise and fall; theories appear and disappear; persecutors exhaust their fury and descend into the grave. But the apostolic Faith endures, because it is founded not upon the wisdom of men, but upon Christ, the Son of the living God.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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