The Church celebrates Sts. Peter and Paul today with a Solemnity, the highest rank of feast. These two apostles, depicted embracing despite their different paths, are called the pillars of the Church because everything built after them rests on what they established. One was the rock on which Christ built his Church; the other carried that Church to the ends of the Roman world.
Who Peter and Paul were
Peter was a Galilean fisherman named Simon until Christ renamed him Cephas, “rock” (John 1:42). He walked with Jesus for three years, denied him three times, and was restored by the risen Lord with the command to “feed my sheep” (John 21:17). He led the Church in Jerusalem, preached at Pentecost, and eventually traveled to Rome where he was crucified upside down under Nero around AD 64.
Paul was Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee and persecutor of Christians until Christ struck him down on the Damascus road (Acts 9:1-9). Blinded, converted, and commissioned as the apostle to the Gentiles, he spent the next three decades planting churches across Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome. He wrote at least thirteen letters that make up half the New Testament. He was beheaded in Rome, also under Nero, around AD 67.
The two men met in Jerusalem and clashed over whether Gentile converts needed to follow Jewish law (Galatians 2:11-14). Paul confronted Peter publicly. Peter eventually agreed. That argument, resolved in charity, kept the Church from splitting into Jewish and Gentile factions before it was fifty years old.
What they’re known for
Peter is shown holding two keys, gold and silver, representing the power to bind and loose that Christ gave him (Matthew 16:19). He is the first Pope, the keeper of the apostolic office. His feast is inseparable from Paul’s because Rome honored them together from the earliest centuries. Both were martyred in the same city under the same emperor. Their blood mixed in the soil of the capital of the world.
Paul holds a sword and a book. The sword represents his martyrdom by beheading and the sharpness of the word of God he preached (Hebrews 4:12). The book is his epistles, the theological backbone of Christian doctrine. His letters to the Romans, Corinthians, and Ephesians remain the most-read explanation of what the death and resurrection of Christ actually mean.
For today
Peter and Paul disagreed and remained brothers. Try this: think of one person in your parish, family, or workplace you avoid because of a past argument. Pray for them by name today. Don’t fix it, don’t rehearse your side. Just say their name and ask God to bless them.
Two apostles, two temperaments, one Church. Carry that with you.
