TEXT: Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, June 29, 2025
June 29, 2025 Father De Celles Homily
Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
June 29, 2025
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
For the last few years and especially the last few months,
there’s been an awful lot said and written about
St. Peter and his successors.
So let me begin today by talking about the other side of this feast: St. Paul.
Of course, today we can’t go through all St. Paul’s writings.
After all, he wrote fourteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.
But we can take some time and briefly consider his life
and what we have to learn from his example.
Historians believe he was born sometime between the years 7 and 10 AD
in the town of Tarsus, which is now located in present day Turkey,
but was then part of the Roman Empire.
Typical of males of his era, he was given both a Jewish name (Saul)
and a Roman name (Paul).
Both of his parents were pious Jews, devout Pharisees of the tribe of Benjamin,
apparently originally from Galilee.
His father became a citizen of Rome, and so his son Paul became one also.
We’re not quite sure how his father became a Roman citizen.
This was a rare honor for someone not born in Rome,
which might mean he was either a very important or very wealthy man,
which in turn might explain how he could afford to send his son Paul,
apparently as a young boy,
to Jerusalem for rabbinical studies under the famous Rabbi Gamaliel.
There we find that Paul excelled
and became a strong defender of the Jewish religion,
especially as the Pharisees understood it
—and remember, Jesus said,
“The Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;
so practice and observe whatever they tell you,
but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.”
Apparently, though, Paul was one of those Pharisees
who not only preached the truth, but also practiced it,
as he himself tells us that he was as zealous a Jew as any.
In fact, he was so zealous that around the year 30AD or so,
he joined in trying to crush what seemed to him
to be a terrible heresy among his fellow Jews:
the heresy called Christianity.
In fact, the Acts of the Apostles tells us Paul was so zealous in his persecution
that it was he who held the coats of the others
as they stoned to death St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
Immediately after this, he went to the high priest for a commission
to go to Damascus to arrest all the Christians there.
But, as we all know from the story told in three different places in Scripture,
on the road to Damascus, he was blinded by the light of Christ,
who personally spoke to him, “Why do you persecute Me?”
And the rest is history.
He left behind his virulent persecution of Christians and
turned his great knowledge and his tremendous zeal
to the service of Jesus, never looking back.
He spent the next thirty years preaching the Gospel in various towns,
eventually going on three great missionary journeys,
that would take him, some say, a combined 6000 miles
all over the eastern Mediterranean.
He would go into cities that had never heard of Christ,
always beginning in the synagogue,
but then quickly reaching out to the Gentiles,
becoming known as “the apostle to the Gentiles.”
Finally, around the year 58 or 60AD he was arrested
and held prisoner for at least three years,
eventually being taken for trial to Rome since he was a Roman citizen.
Exactly what happened in Rome, we’re not completely certain.
It seems that Paul may have gained his freedom temporarily
and perhaps traveled briefly to preach in Spain.
In any case, we do know that he was back in Rome
when the first great Roman persecution of the Church broke out,
as the Emperor Nero had him put to death, chopping his head off,
around the year 67 (by some accounts on the same day as St. Peter was crucified,
also in Rome).
But even before his martyrdom,
St. Paul had already endured every kind of incredible hardship.
He himself summed it up in his second letter to the Corinthians:
“Five times I have received…the forty lashes less one.
Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned.
Three times I have been shipwrecked;
a night and a day I have been adrift at sea…
in danger from rivers…from robbers…
from my own people…from Gentiles,
danger in the city…in the wilderness…at sea.”
Or as we read in today’s second reading from his letter to St. Timothy
(Allow me to use a slightly better translation.):
“I am already being poured out like a libation…
I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race;
I have kept the faith.”
In all this, he never boasted of his own accomplishments
but only in what the Lord had done through him.
As we read today,
“The Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
so that through me the proclamation might be completed
and all the Gentiles might hear it.”
Now, like the Lord who had sent him,
St. Paul could not leave all his converts like sheep without a shepherd.
So, he did two wonderful things for them.
First, he would often lay hands on some of the men he left behind,
priests and bishops to lead those churches.
Second, he would write to them,
encouraging them to remember all he had taught them.
By the power and will of God, fourteen of those letters survived
(or thirteen if you don’t count the Letter to the Hebrews).
Those letters, along with letters of other apostles and apostolic men,
were copied meticulously, passed from one city to another,
and handed on from one generation to the next,
held by all to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.
They were believed not to be merely the words of Paul,
but the Word of God Himself—the Word of the New Covenant,
or the New Testament of Holy Scripture.
For 2000 years up to today, these letters have been essential to the life of the Church.
But as St. Peter would write in his own letter, his second in Scripture:
“Our beloved brother Paul wrote to you also…in all his letters.
There are some things in them hard to understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction,
as they do the other scriptures.
You, therefore, beloved…beware lest you be carried away with…error…”
In other words, Peter, with great kindness and respect
—for Paul and for the Holy Spirit who had inspired him–
warns the early Christians that some of the things in Paul’s writings
need careful thought and some explanation;
they have to be understood in the light of everything else
Paul and the other apostles taught.
In this regard we think of the line from St. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians:
“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions
which you were taught by us, either orally or by letter.”
St. Paul attests that the word of God, the teaching of Christ and the apostles,
has been handed down to us
not just by these letters found in the Bible,
but by the “tradition…taught…orally…by us”
—the apostles and those sharing in and succeeding to their ministry.
So, years later, whether in the 16th century or in the 21st century,
when someone would say something like,
“I’m a Christian but I don’t believe the things
the Catholic Church teaches
because they’re not specifically written in the Bible,”
the words of St. Peter and St. Paul shout out of the centuries:
“Hold tight to the tradition…both oral and written” and
“Beware lest you be carried away with…error…”
In God’s providence, He knew these problems would happen,
that the writings of St. Paul and the other apostles
would easily be misunderstood or taken out of context
or even purposefully distorted.
And so, as we read in today’s Gospel, from Matthew 16:18-19
He said to Peter:
“I say to you, you are Peter [which means “rock”],
and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Here he gives His Church the office not simply of apostle,
but of Peter—”the Rock”—of the pope.
And 2000 years later we can number and know the names
of all 266 successors to Peter,
including the name of the current successor, Leo XIV.
What a great gift Christ has given us:
Paul, the instrument of so much of the written Word, Sacred Scripture,
and Peter, the Rock who hands on and clarifies the oral teaching,
Sacred Tradition.
And how beautiful that Peter also contributes two of the books of Scripture,
and that Paul reminds us to hold tight to the oral traditions.
It’s interesting that some say Paul fought with Peter
or didn’t recognize his authority.
For example, they point to his letter to the Galatians, where Paul wrote,
“When Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch I opposed him to his face.”
But if you read Galatians carefully, you see
that Paul was not correcting Peter’s teaching,
but rather correcting Peter for not living according to that teaching.
Paul thought Peter was misleading people by not eating with the Gentiles
because he might offend the Jews.
Big news: Peter was personally imperfect.
Not everything he did or said was infallible.
Jesus knew that better than anyone: He watched as Peter denied Him at His trial.
But Jesus still gave him the keys and the power to bind and loose,
which applies to teaching and protecting the Gospel,
not to the way Peter and the Popes would live,
or even to their personal opinions.
Christ uses the Papacy to protect what is handed down as the Word of God,
not what individual popes might personally think or do or say.
So, Paul also writes the Galatians:
“After three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter],
and remained with him fifteen days…
After fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem
…and I laid before…[James and Cephas and John]…
the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles,
lest somehow I should be running or had run in vain…”
In other words, St. Paul ran his stuff by Peter and the other apostles
to make sure he had it right.
As they were once martyred together and once served Christ in Rome together,
and proclaimed the same Word of God together,
today the Church celebrates the feast of these two great saints together.
One points to the other, and both point to Christ.
Today let us lift our eyes to the Great St. Paul and St. Peter
and to their teachings and lives.
And together with their intercession,
let us pray that every day we may imitate them even as they imitate Christ:
that we may pour ourselves out like a libation for Christ;
that we may fight the good fight;
and that we may finish the race, keeping the faith–
the “faith” that was handed on by the great Ss. Peter and Paul
in the Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture,
and that is protected by the keys of the kingdom.