Setting the world ablaze

If Peter and Paul can be lifted above their flaws to become great, so can you

Paul and Peter, from a medieval lectionary.

A homily for the Solemnity of Peter and Paul, delivered June 28 & 29, 2025 in Medford, New Jersey.

Two opposing facts can be true at the same time.

First, the Church is the bride of Christ, continuing his mission across the centuries and around the world, led by a succession of men traced back to the Apostle Peter himself, and it carries on being the body of Christ in this world, feeding us with the word and the eucharist, until he comes again.

Second, the church is a mess.

The first thing is obvious. We have the testimony of Jesus himself, which we heard in today’s gospel, as well as countless writings and councils from the first century down to our own time, giving authority to Peter and the apostles to continue his mission until he comes again.

The second is also obvious, because, well, we’re here. Groucho Marx once said I don’t want to belong to any club that will have me as a member. But I guess it depends on the club, and the members.

The church takes everyone: the saintly, the good, the bad, the very bad and the rest of us, who are probably just good enough. What unites us are the sacraments, the pope and the bishops, and the fact that we are all trying our best to return to our Father through faith in his Son, by the strength of the Holy Spirit, who lives with in us.

Sometimes, that path can be a pretty rough one.

The great saints didn’t all start out great, but they ended great. And they are with us here today, crowding around this altar and all the altars of the world together with the angels, worshipping the Lord with us. That’s what we mean by the communion of the saints. That’s the church: all her children, living and dead, worshipping the Lord together.

Look at these two men who we remember today. Peter and Paul. At the time Jesus called them, were they greater than every other person in First Century Judea?

Absolutely not.

Peter was a fisherman, an ordinary working man, and when we encounter him prior to pentecost, he doesn’t make a great impression. He’s weak, cowardly, hotheaded, impulsive. He fights when he shouldn’t, and runs when he should stand firm. He denies he even knows the man he swore to stand by and die with. Moments after his great testimony that we just heard, he rebukes Jesus, and Jesus calls him Satan!

And yet, for a brief moment, the Holy Spirit fills him with power and wisdom and he says those wonderful words: You are the Christ the Son of the Living God. And then the moment ends, and he goes back to being just Simon.

But another moment will come, after he’s broken and shamed, when the spirit will lodge in him and never leave, and the Peter we find in the book of Acts: working miracles, standing strong, preaching with fire and wisdom: that’s the Peter who will be the rock, the first in an unbroken line of men to lead our church, from that moment, down to Bob from Chicago, our beloved Holy Father, Pope Leo.

Paul, if anything, is worse. Paul was a fanatic. A Christian hunter. In scripture he is at the murder of the first Christian martyr, the deacon Stephen, and those of us who are deacons take that kind of personally. He was certainly responsible for the deaths of many elievers.

But again, Jesus comes to him, and the Spirit fills him, and he becomes a new man.

And yet, he’s not a new man. Paul doesn’t stop being Paul. All his gifts, and some of his flaws, are still there. Peter doesn’t stop being Peter. But the Spirit fills them, and in filling them, the Spirit frees them to be who they were always meant to be.

Both men are in prison when we encounter them in today’s readings. Peter is freed by an angel. He has more work to do. Paul, will not be freed. He will soon be executed, but he is happy, because he has run his race, he has done his job, and he longs to be with the Father.

In legend, Peter flees Rome, and meets Christ on the road, traveling in the opposite direction. He says the famous phrase Quo vadis Domine?, Where are you going, Lord? Jesus responds I’m going to Rome to die a second time in your place. Peter finally understands that this is his moment, and he returns to Rome to face death–and achieve eternal glory. And the church goes on as St. Linus, and then St. Anacletus, and 264 other men step up to succeed them as pope.

If God can take hot-headed, cowardly Peter and make him the first pope, the chosen leader of Christ’s church on earth; if God can take Paul, a zealot filled with murderous rage, and make him the great evangelist to the world, imagine what he can do with each of us if we let him.

We’re all a bit of a mess in some way or another, and that’s why the church can be a mess. Jesus understands. He saw into the hearts of the flawed people he called to serve him, and he still sees. But he sees deeper. He sees beyond the flaws. He sees in us what we don’t even see in ourselves. And so he calls us.

The great St. Catherine of Siena wrote in a letter, If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze! That’s not just a promise for saints. That’s a promise for all of us.

The writer Oscar Wilde once observed that there’s no saint without a past and no sinner without a future. Now, Wilde was being sarcastic when he wrote that, but at the end of a life of sin, he repented, converted to Catholicism, and died in the arms of the Church. The Spirit calls. It never stops calling. It’s calling you right now. It called you here, but it also calls us to go out there, as so many in our ministries do, serving the sick and the poor and broken, but most of all being Catholic in the world. Being a people filled with joy and charity so great that people say, What’s your secret?

The Holy Spirit is already a flame in our hearts that was placed there on the day of our baptism. Whether or not that flame grows into a fire–as it did with Peter, as it did with Paul–that part is up to us.

A Demon, Some Murder Plots, and an Incorruptible Saint