As the month of June comes to a close, we celebrate the great feast of Saints Peter and Paul. This feast day is so important to our Church that when it lands on a Sunday, we do not celebrate the Sunday, we celebrate the feast.
This celebration of Saints Peter and Paul is of ancient origin. There is evidence of this feast being celebrated on June 29 in Rome at some point before the year 258 A.D. When a feast has such an ancient origin, it shows us that the first Christians found that it taught something so foundational to our faith that they wanted to commemorate it every year. This feast is not as old as Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, and Epiphany, but it is possibly older than the feast of the Annunciation. Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi, which we just celebrated, came 1000 years later. This feast and Lent might have appeared in the Church around the same time.
What is it that those early Christians wanted to remember on this feast? St. Augustine, in a homily on this feast day, said, “This day has been consecrated for us by the martyrdom of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. It is not some obscure martyrs we are talking about. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. These martyrs had seen what they proclaimed, they pursued justice by confessing the truth, by dying for the truth.” He outlines the importance of St. Peter’s confession to Jesus, “you are the Christ, the Son of the living God” and our Lord’s response, “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” He eventually concludes by saying, “There is one day for the passion of two apostles. But these two also were as one; although they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, Paul followed. We are celebrating a feast day, consecrated for us by the blood of the apostles. Let us love their faith, their lives, their labors, their sufferings, their confession of faith, their preaching.” To Augustine, this feast day reminded us of the foundation of the Church on the rock of Peter, and Paul followed in his footsteps, securing that foundation through his example and preaching.
We also see in this feast day, the unity of the two major impulses of the Church. In Peter, we see the teaching authority of the Church forming the foundation of belief and practice. In Paul, we see the Church going out to all the world to draw people back to God. Celebrating together reminds us that even though they occasionally disagreed, Paul was always careful to follow in the footsteps of Peter and to seek guidance from Peter. (For example, see Galatians 1:18) Ultimately, Paul followed Peter to Rome and gave his life in service of Christ there. They are considered the founders of the Church of Rome, that is, of the Roman Catholic Church.