Ss Peter and Paul

Happy Solemnity!

Today we celebrated the memory and ask for the intercession of Ss Peter and Paul, the two pillars of the apostolic Church. We often see Peter's role as maintaining the tradition of the Church and bringing the Jewish people to the fulness of faith in Christ, and Paul's role as spreading the Gospel to the wider world, particularly the pagans. But in reality both apostles did both these things. People nowadays like to label each other as Liberal or Conservative. We could say that both apostles were "conservative" (in the true sense of the word) in handing on the faith and the tradition as they had received it, and "liberal" in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the "glad tidings" (evangelion) that changes the whole world. To be one or the other is to be merely political. To be both insofar as is appropriate to each is to be Catholic. Tradition and grace do not exist without one another.

"It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation." (2 Cor 4: 18)