Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons – Feast of SS Peter and Paul – 29 June 2014

We should really do more to celebrate this great double feast of the ‘glorious Apostles Peter and Paul’, for both West and East have always celebrated it. There has never been any sense that this is somehow just the feast for the Church of Rome, after all, Peter and Paul started the missionary journey from Jerusalem. Peter was in Antioch before he got to Rome and Paul was converted in Damascus.

The faith they were martyred for in Rome started and grew in the area now so torn apart by strife and war, where our sisters and brothers, on a daily basis, see people kidnapped and killed for being Christian, where their churches are defiled and their icons and images destroyed, where faith in Christ is a continuing witness of the martyrs, so linked to this feast of Peter and Paul!

But there is also hope, too. On this day the Patriarchate of Constantinople sends special delegations and greetings to the Pope of Rome, a reminder that we are also working towards unity and that in celebration of our great Apostles we acknowledge that deeper unity of the Church in the Lord!

The mission of the Church is to become one and it means we must renew our efforts to make the sufferings and plight of our Christian communities in the Middle East known and aid given in whatever way we can. Why? Because they are part of our family story, they link us to Peter and Paul!

Looking at the readings for the feast I am filled with great emotion! Peter the unstable rock! Beware the temptation to isolate him from the community. We cannot read those words of Matthew without looking at later passages, for Peter is not alone, he belongs to the Church and it is to the Church that the keys are given.

In Acts, Paul is nearing his end, sensing death, but he looks forward in trust. His words are intensely moving, he is pouring out, quite literally, his whole life; ‘I have competed well, I have finished the race; I have kept the faith’, total hope that the Lord will bring him safely home to the heavenly kingdom.

As I grow older these words of Paul become my wish, my desire. I hope they become yours! To God be glory forever and ever. Amen.