SAINTS PETER AND PAUL - JUNE 29, 2025

FEAST OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL

The city of Rome has a legendary founding: two twin brothers named Romulus and Remus disagreed on which hill to build a city. Romulus killed Remus, built the city, and named it after himself. The paganism that was at the foundation of the Roman Empire appropriately encapsulates the violence and fraternal neglect that led to the cruelty we associate with the Romans, especially against the Christians. Christian Rome, however, was also established by two brothers, but these were brothers in Christ who were more willing to go to their death for their faith than to enact violence against others. Peter and Paul are the foundation of Roman Catholicism, and, on this Sunday, we celebrate their solemnity within the Church.

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We cannot separate our veneration for Peter and Paul from the city of Rome itself. As we know, Peter was the first bishop of Rome, establishing this office as the supreme spiritual father over the entire faithful throughout the world. Paul, on the other hand, was an active evangelist who traveled throughout the Empire as a Roman citizen. Their charisms were different, their personalities were different, their offices were different, but they were brothers in Christ. If you visit Rome today, you can visit two of the four major basilicas named after these two Apostles. The more well-known one is St. Peter’s Basilica in the heart of the Vatican. St. Peter’s is built atop the burial site of Peter; in the center of St. Peter’s square, there is an Egyptian obelisk that was once at the center of the circus of Nero, perhaps the very last thing Peter saw before his very public and intentionally humiliating martyrdom by being crucified upside-down. Further away, you can visit the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, which was built above what is believed to be the burial site of St. Paul. Both of these all-important church buildings are Roman monuments to the death and suffering these two men undertook in order to most perfectly emulate Christ. But their suffering began from the moment they both respectively accepted their callings to be missionaries for Christ, and they suffered with love and joy. Paul calls himself a libation being poured out, his life a final offering for his Savior. In some of the most beautiful imagery ever used for one’s life and death, he writes to his best friend Timothy, “I have competed well; I have finished the race.” Peter lived with just as much joy and acceptance in his death as he did in his suffering, when he was imprisoned by Herod, yet spared by the Holy Spirit, for a more violent yet glorious death at his own crucifixion years later.