Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

Peter and Paul - El Greco

June 28th 2026
Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul

We must try and avoid any form of triumphalism for this feast, that is not how the apostles witnessed to their faith in Jesus, rather it is more prescient to celebrate as we ought, with joy and thoughtfulness, grateful for the witness and ministry of these two key figures at the beginnings of our faith.. In our Catholic tradition we also pray for Pope Leo XIV on this day, as he exercises his Petrine ministry of strengthening us in the faith, a primacy not of power but a ministry of service to all, one in which we are called to unity. All this we know and accept as part of our Catholic understanding and look to Peter for its origins. But who exercises a Pauline ministry?

Karl Rahner is his book The Church After the Council (1969) reminds us that this ministry is exercised by all the baptised who as share in the Church's mission, which makes laypeople active participants in the mission of spreading the Gospel. Rahner emphasized that this apostolic work is not reserved for ordained ministers alone, but is a fundamental responsibility for all, this is sharing in the Pauline ministry: "The Church must not be content to revolve around her own axis... but must ever anew consider how she can serve-God, man, the world, and her destiny."

I find this insight helpful and constructive, and it is a good reminder that this feast is a double one, and so we need to look at the gifts both saints bring to the Church of today and to each one of us for our mission and Christian vocation.

Both our first and second reading show us the apostles undergoing trial and difficulty, Peter in prison is released by the intervention of the angel of the Lord. Paul nearing his end, places his hope in the Lord and looks towards the heavenly Kingdom. Both of them give praise and glory to the Lord who has care of them, and both find strength in the presence of the Lord manifested in various ways to them, that is part of their gift, to encourage us to persevere in our lives of faith, and when trials come to seek the Lord's help even in the darkest of times.

But more than this, both apostles teach us that a life of faith is a journey into the humility of Christ, becoming less so that others may become more. We need to read on from today's gospel to balance the event a little more, for Peter's confession of the Christ, pun on his name from unstable stone to unshakable rock can never be isolated from the section following where Jesus rebukes him as 'satan' for not following the meaning and context of Jesus' words about his death and resurrection. We see in this reading Peter as he is, one who puts his foot in it because he is impetuous, human flaws which make him real to us, and it is the same with Paul, the hard working missionary who in a saying we can recognise, knows he has tried his best: "For I am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith." (2 Tim 4:6,7)

This is not boasting , it is the voice of a weary, tired man facing death as we all will! Yet in this he comes across as a great human, for in his ending is our hope in the risen Lord, his mission is to spread the good news and he hands it to us without rancour.

May these two apostles, Peter and Paul be for us not only inspiration, but also encouragement, may they lead us to a loving humility in faith, following not so much their example, but finding in them the Lord they both loved and served.

LECTIO

From a homily of Pope Francis - 29th June 2023

Brothers and sisters, we are celebrating Peter and Paul. They answered that essential question in life - "Who is Jesus for me?" - by following him as his disciples and by proclaiming the Gospel. It is good for us to grow as a Church in the same way, by following the Lord, constantly and humbly seeking him out. It is good for us to become a Church that is also outgoing, finding joy not in the things of the world, but in preaching the Gospel before the world and opening people's hearts to the presence of God. Bringing the Lord Jesus everywhere, with humility and joy: in our city of Rome, in our families, in our relationships and our neighbourhoods, in civil society, in the Church, and political life, in the entire world, especially in those places where poverty, decay, and marginalization are deeply rooted.

Karl Rahner

"For a Catholic understanding of the faith there is no reason why the basic concern of Evangelical Christianity as it comes to expression in the three "only's" should have no place in the Catholic Church. Accepted as basic and ultimate formulas of Christianity, they do not have to lead a person out of the Catholic Church. . . . They can call the attention of the Catholic church again and again to the fact that grace alone and faith alone really are what saves, and that with all our manoeuvring through the history of dogma and the teaching office, we Catholic Christians must find our way back to the sources again and again, back to the primary origins of Holy Scripture and all the more so of the Holy Spirit."

Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity