Mass readings for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul:
Acts 12.1-11 Psalm 34.1-8 2 Timothy 4.6-8, 17-18 Matthew 16.13-19
Today we celebrate two men. Born Simon and Saul, they are better known to us as Peter and Paul; and the change in their lives by their encounter with Christ, the change in their persons as reflected in the change in their names is something for us to reflect upon. It begs the question of what needs to change in us as disciples, as a community of disciples, prompting us to ask what name (figuratively speaking) we go by in this world, because after all, baptized, confirmed, we bear the name of Christ.
Names and naming are an interesting topic. It comes up at the birth of a child, and the parents have their ideas. Today, naming is often a matter of fashion and a desire for novelty. Giving one’s child a distinct name in the hope it will bring them to a sense of their uniqueness, and so, an identity that is distinct and apart from the crowd. Some still do as ancient peoples were apt to do: tradition provides the pool of names from which to choose. So, no surprise that Simon and Saul have Hebrew names, but these are Hellenized versions of the Hebrew Shimon and Sha’al, which reflects something I’ve mentioned before: that the Jews of the first century were fast assimilating to the larger Graeco-Roman culture (most no longer knew Hebrew, but were Greek-speaking). So, while having a common identity as Jewish men, they had to deal with the world as it was, fast changing, and so, be accustomed to the Greek form of their own names. Yes, it was still a world marked by tradition but also a world of competing traditions: those of pagan Imperial Rome set against the myriad cultures of the subject peoples of the empire; and Judea and the Galilee are numbered among those who are resisting with failing strength assimilation into the world Rome is trying to make.
We might say they are nonetheless fortunate in one significant way: they are sons of Israel, God’s chosen people – the Saviour will be in a very real sense, one of them. That has an advantage in understanding who Jesus is; and so, communicating that to the Jews of both the Holy Land, but also of the worldwide diaspora as they have common points of reference in the scriptures and in temple and synagogue worship.
They are also men in a time of transition; antiquity is coming to a close as the world around them is being united under one empire. Because of that, Simon and Saul will have opportunities never before available to a fisherman from the Galilee, and a tent-maker from Tarsus. Through them, the Church has a once in history opportunity to evangelize, and bring, not just to Israel, but to all the nations, a new spiritual consciousness.
I’ve mentioned this already, the Holy Father, Pope Leo, warning us that we stand at the cusp of tremendous change, the technological revolution of AI (artificial intelligence). It’s both a threat to social and political stability, and possibly a gift to those societies able to adapt it for the benefit of people. It would appear to be a potential weapon in the hands of those who want to reduce the nations of the world to a bland singular global mono-culture of consumerism; but by its good use, we may yet come to a unity in this world that leads to human flourishing. It could break either way.
We, as Christians, are not unlike our spiritual ancestors of Judea and the Galilee in that we’ve witnessed the loss of Christendom just as they lost the kingdom of Israel; both longing for its return, but in a perfected form. Whatever empire we today have been incorporated into, it’s not one like that of Rome, it doesn’t arise from a single great city, or a powerful nation. The new empire is transnational, the true power elite are above nation-states; the members of which carry multiple passports marking them as a curious new breed of people whose homeland isn’t a nation-state but a state of mind created by a shared set of ideas, and sense of their moral and intellectual superiority.
The new technologies that so worry the pope could be misused to control people well beyond what the Church has understood to be the purview of government. Government is to provide security, the conditions for a measure of prosperity across the whole of society, justice through well-ordered and impartial courts, and most importantly, the freedom and leisure for people to nurture their spiritual selves, through family life, faith, and service to others.
And the mandate of the Church to spread the gospel, to baptize, teach and preach, effectively is to push back against power in the world and to create that space, that time for people to commune with each other and God, and so come to true self-understanding as God’s beloved children, and by that, true flourishing.
It’s by that key relationship with God that we as individuals come truly into ourselves, and then in the aggregate, make a civilization that is grounded in sanctity rather than the base ambitions of our current civilization.
Simon’s relationship with Jesus, that by grace brings him to realize who our Lord is, and then make the public confession that he is the Son of God, that takes so much of who Simon was as a man and elevates it, expands it, amplifies it. Simon was more than a fisherman on the day he met Jesus by the Lake of Galilee. He was actually a businessman, and a leader. He’d formed a partnership with James and John, and had a two-boat operation. While others on the lake fished from their one boat, and had to hope they chose their spot well, Simon doubled his chances of getting a catch; and on a good day, he had the possibility of a huge haul from the two boats. And clearly, from the relationships among the fisherman, (and Jesus see this) he’s a leader. Yet apart from Christ, Simon may have become a successful fisherman, eventually operating his own little fleet and hauling in even more fish, and by that having greater wealth, and distinction among the fisher folk of Galilee. So, we might never have known him but for an archaeologist someday digging up the foundations of the villa he might have built with his money.
In Christ, however, he becomes “Peter” the rock upon which Christ builds his Church. The good qualities of the man, and his ambitions – they’re all pretty mundane and not terribly exceptional in the person of Simon – these become heroic and holy in Peter as his virtues grow in their purity and strength to take on Christ’s mandate, and the project of his life goes from being a modicum of personal success and material comfort to being the spiritual transformation and redemption of the world.
The impression we have of Saul as an educated man of religious convictions, is also one of intellectual power but also arrogance. In his career as a persecutor of the Church, his victims would have been entirely Jews. One can imagine his interrogations as he, the expert Pharisee, would bat aside the testimony of prisoners who weren’t as educated as he, and so had difficulty articulating their faith in Christ. And so, he might have continued in this work, and become a villain in our story alongside the Herod the Great and his sons. But being an intellectual, and wanting to master the subject of his persecution, he became a student of the gospel, albeit with the motive of defeating it. And so, doubtless on the day of his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus, his mind would have been filled with the arguments and the evidence for Christ even as he bent his thoughts to refuting it all. Then he meets the Lord, is famously blinded, and by that trauma comes to see the truth which he was fighting to deny. Christ does not humiliate Saul, but he does take away his illusions by putting him in the dark for a time, to really consider who he is. And we know, from his own letters he admits it, Saul was full himself. Through Christ he is able to find a place of spiritual repose so as to really examine things, and then from a place of humility, retrain his mind in the light of the gospel. He eventually takes the name “Paul” which means, “the least one.” Significantly, this is a Roman Latin name, in no way from Israel’s tradition but rather it’s of Rome. But imagine its effect, him being introduced to a crowd in a Greek town, and eventually in Rome itself, “here he is, the least” who then goes on to share the greatest story ever told. Now all that great intellect of his is at the service of Christ, and truly, at our service to this very day in the words he left us for our instruction.
So, we must ask ourselves, in the world in which we find ourselves, in the faith we profess, how might our mundane abilities, and modest talents be brought to something glorious through devoting them to Christ? How might we put aside ourselves in one sense, to become even more ourselves in the name of Christ.
As we enter a time of leisure, and I hope we all find rest and relaxation in the coming weeks, enjoyment of God’s good creation, fellowship that is Christian in spirit if not necessarily in name, that we reflect upon what change we might make in the coming pastoral year that commences in September. How might we individually and collectively grow more into the name we all bear, Christ? And so, become more ourselves than ever we could be apart from him, as Peter and Paul did.
Amen.