SOLEMN FEAST OF SAINT PETER AND SAINT PAUL, THE APOSTLES
Quang Phan SVD
Acts 12:1-11; 2 Timothy 4:6-8; Matthew 16:13-19
Talking about the apostles Peter and Paul, we may immediately think of the two greatest missionaries of the infant church, the two founding pillars of the Christian mission. Peter is the apostle to the Jews while Paul is to the gentiles. Indeed, they need no introduction. The traditions about them and their writings in the scriptures speak for themselves. Their greatness is self-evident!
However, reflecting on what happened surrounding those events related to Peter and Paul, we find something very meaningful and relevant for our spiritual life in conversion and in experiencing God’s on-going forgiveness despite our human frailty and sinfulness.
Prior to the Easter event, we can almost hardly say anything positive about these two men. They represent our human ambition with all the ugliness for its own sake. While Paul was a zealous persecutor of the church with the blood of Christians on his hands, Peter was an impulsive leader perhaps whose mouth was faster than his brain! He would say things that he would later regret, insisting that no matter what, he would never leave Jesus or deny him. But the stories from the gospel prove otherwise.
The significant conversion of these two great apostles took place only after the Easter and Pentecost events. We call this metanoia, an inner conversion which makes one’s life turn around for the better and it will never be the same again. “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” Paul claimed (Gal 2:20). Peter was three times reaffirmed by the Risen Lord.
This conversion happened only when they had received the Holy Spirit whose role is indispensable in our faith life for our ongoing metanoia. Conversion, metanoia, is not simply about the change of one’s religious affiliation but the change of one’s inner self with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Paul was a zealous murderer. Peter was a coward who repeatedly denied his master. None of us in our wickedness or cowardice perhaps could ever reach the level of these two men. Yet, they become great men because they learnt to trust in the possibility of conversion that brings healing and change to our lives. They let God take over, not their ambitious ego.
The stories of the lives of these two men are also the stories of transcendence. It is a shining beacon of hope in our age of practical consumerism that has lost its faith in those transcendent values. What is impossible now, becomes possible in God. We are capable of change and thus redeemable, only when we learn to surrender and abandon ourselves to God’s plan.
On this solemn celebration of these two great men, we can learn the possibility of conversion for our own life as long as we remain open to the working of the Holy Spirit. No matter how failing, ugly or sinful we are, God’s grace and his love is greater than our human shortcomings put together. The lives of the Apostles Peter and Paul are an exemplar evidence of this.
Solemn Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Apostles.
29th June 2014.
(Thanks to Fr Quang for being our guest reflection writer this week. Fr Quang is a missionary in Vietnam, but is visiting Australia at the moment, where he did his formation.)