Solemnity of Saints
Peter and Paul
June 29, 2015 8:30am
I am thinking that Saints Peter
and Paul may have some helpful messages for us today.
First, Peter and Paul did not
agree with each other on everything.
The Acts of the Apostles shows
them in clear disagreement.
So, I think in our Church today,
there can be different points of view.
There can be disagreement on
certain things.
We can be one in faith and one in
the Lord without complete uniformity.
For one person or one side to
make a complete claim to what they call the “truth” and to disparage others who
in their opinion do have the “truth” is
to ignore the experience of Peter and Paul.
That is no longer the
righteousness that Paul writes about in his letters.
It is instead self-righteousness.
Peter and Paul lived in very
challenging times.
There were outright persecutions
going on.
There were very different moral
values.
In many ways, the times they
lived in make today look like cheesecake.
Maybe their experience might slow
us down and temper us a bit.
It might keep us from becoming
alarmist and getting into hysteria over whatever.
The last thing I have been
thinking is that Peter and Paul did not get political.
The Roman government was not
their friend.
It was their enemy and
persecutor.
What did Peter and Paul do?
They preached the positive
message of Jesus Christ to the persons and communities they encountered.
They did not preach a negative
message against anyone, especially the government of the day.
They did not enter into cultural
or spiritual warfare.
They did not get political.
And they did a good job preaching
positively to persons and communities.
Again, their example here might
be very good for us and the Church to recall today.
