As I write this piece for the Liturgy Project, the cardinal electors in Rome are busy preparing to elect a new pope as well as finding time to make comments to the media. By the time we celebrate the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul there will be a new pope.

As far as we can work out, St. Paul was born in Tarsus in Syria. He was roughly the same age as Jesus and was educated in the Torah by the foremost teacher, Gamaliel. Unlike St. Paul, St. Peter was born in Palestine in the city of Bethsaida and would appear not to have had any formal ‘religious education’. He was roughly the same age as Paul and Jesus. Peter was a Galilean fisherman, and Paul was a Roman citizen who persecuted Christians, being responsible for the stoning of St. Stephen outside the city of Jerusalem. St. Stephen was the first Christian martyr.

They were very different people, with differing backgrounds and experience, but we honour them today because of their faith in the risen Lord and the fact that, in the words of today’s preface, in their different ways, “they gathered together the one family of Christ and are revered together throughout the world”.

Today’s celebration is rich in so many aspects of theology and ecclesiology, which are impossible for me to explore.

The search for and emergence of a new pope, in the minds of many, raises the issue of unity. Not just unity between Christians of different traditions nor people of other faiths. In the minds of many Catholic Christians is the need for a greater and growing unity within the Catholic ranks. While Peter and Paul were very different in terms of their gifts and roles at the beginning of the Church, one thing is clear. It was not always easy, but they managed to ‘gather into one’ the family of Christ. Perhaps they teach us that difference within the Church is not a problem if it leads to diversity and the integration of the many different flavours and directions into a united reality. The new pope and every member of the Church must work against division at all costs.

Both Peter and Paul had faith in Jesus as the ‘Christ and the Son of the Living God’. That same faith must grow in the lives of Christians. A faith that sees Jesus as risen into our lives to bring the fullness of life and a faith that is able to hold the balance between Jesus’s humanity and his divinity.

Both Paul’s and Peter’s lives provide evidence of continual conversion. For Paul, his conversion was not only on the road to Damascus. His writings showed that he grew day by day in greater and greater love for Jesus. And the same was true of Peter. His fear filled denial of Jesus at the charcoal fire gave way to a growing courage to profess the resurrection of Jesus which we see in the Acts of the Apostles. Both had the kind of courage in proclaiming the message of Jesus that took them to crucifixion in Peter’s case and to beheading in Paul’s.  Today’s red vestments speak of the ‘martyrs crown’ that they both won. And being a ‘martyr’ meant being a witness. Does our openness to repentance and conversion make us effective witnesses?

Paul was an ‘outstanding preacher’ and his missionary journeys and successes are an example to us all in our work for evangelisation.  Paul had that great gift of being able to understand a culture and introduce the kerygma in a way that would connect with people at the deepest level. Would we benefit from taking a few leaves out of his book?

If Paul was an outstanding preacher then Peter was ‘foremost in confessing the faith’. Perhaps that is why Jesus called him the rock on which the Church would be built. The ‘faith’ here means that whole body of knowledge and teaching which we hold as precious, derived as it is from scripture and ‘Tradition’. It is this awesome responsibility that the new pope accepts, as do all of us who are ordained. The responsibility to make the truths of our Catholic inheritance available to those we are called to serve. And that is every woman, man and child on the planet. And the people of our time are desperate to be set free by the wisdom that is God’s gift to us in Christ.

The Pope is the careful custodian of those keys given to Peter at Caesarea Philippi, and those keys are a sign of papal authority exercised in the name of Jesus. An authority which empowers the pope to keep the body of Church teaching intact and to ‘bind and loose’. I wonder if Jesus had his words to the scribes and Pharisees in mind when he gave Peter the power to bind and loose. We read in Matthew 23.13 “Alas for you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut up the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces, neither going in yourselves nor allowing others to go who want to”.

I feel sure that primacy of the papal office and the Petrine ministry deserves a mention today. If Pope Francis taught us anything, it was how important the office of the pope is in providing a focal point of hope for so many, whether Christians, believers or people of no faith. And to provide a voice for the poor and oppressed and those forced to the margins of society or culture.

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Today is a sort of ‘birthday’ for the Roman Church. Peter and Paul, two very different Apostles yet united in Christ. The Preface of today’s Mass sums up beautifully this ‘unity in diversity.’ The collects remember that we owe the first preaching of Catholic faith and practice to these two men.

Two Mass formularies are given for today. The Vigil Mass (for the Saturday Evening Mass on the 28^th) and the Mass of the Day.

Eucharistic Prayer 1, the Roman Canon, is most suitable for this day.

Intercession:  That Christians may work for unity in action and greater understanding in belief.

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Note: These hymns have been chosen from different sources.

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Fight the good fight (CFE171, L860)

For all the saints (CFE176, L371, LHON260, TCH166)

Unless a grain of wheat (CFE754, L748, LHON697)

Key

CFE - Celebration Hymnal for Everyone

L – Laudate

LHON – Liturgical Hymns Old and New (Mayhew, 1999)

TCH – The Catholic Hymnbook (Gracewing)