Sunday June 29 2025

Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Acts 12,1-11

Psaume : 33 (34),2-3,4-5,6-7,8-9

2rd reading: 2 Timothy 4,6:8.17-18, XNUMX-XNUMX

Gospel: Matthew 16,13-19

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Before becoming pillars of the Church, Simon and Saul had an encounter: a peaceful encounter, but rather disturbing for Simon. Certainly, he had already met Jesus in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing. But when he and his brother Andrew were cleaning the nets in the boat and Jesus called them, he left everything there and followed him. A life-changing experience.

Saul's encounter with Jesus was more violent, more brutal. It was on the road to Damascus that Saul had this apparition that stunned him. An encounter with the Risen One, or rather the resurrected Crucified One, who would lead him to baptism by Ananias in Damascus.

But both are marked in their history by the rejection of Christ. Saul, it was as a son of Israel versed in the Holy Scriptures that he contested the claim of this Jesus of Nazareth to be the announced Messiah. And undoubtedly because for him, the cross was incompatible with what he had understood of who the Messiah should be. And precisely, on the road to Damascus, this is what is revealed to him: by refusing the Crucified, he persecutes him and consequently he persecutes the Church. In this encounter, Paul will be turned, but he will keep all his life this memory that before being saved, he lost himself by refusing Salvation. Simon, for his part, advances in the footsteps of Jesus, makes discoveries, listens to his teaching, is entrusted, as we have heard in the Gospel, with the responsibility of the Church: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.” But we know well that if we had continued the Gospel for a few verses, we would have already heard Simon Peter being called “Satan” by Jesus. Indeed, when Jesus announces his Passion, Peter says to him: "God forbid, Lord! This will not happen to you.". And Jesus answered him: “Get behind me, Satan! Your thoughts are not those of God, but those of men.” (Cf. Mt 16,22:23-XNUMX). ​​Simon Peter will be fascinated by Jesus. He will truly love the Lord and when they are on the eve of his Passion, Simon Peter is ready to go all the way with Jesus: “If all fall because of you, I will never fall.” (Mt 26,33:XNUMX)…
“Simon, Simon The devil has asked for you to be sifted, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; when you return, strengthen your brothers. And Peter will have to come back from his triple denial. And he will always be, until today in 2025, the one who denied the Lord three times.

The Lord calls only poor sinners to follow him. We can only understand salvation in our personal history. It is not in books, not in the catechism, that we can understand what salvation is: it is in our vital personal experience that we can grasp what it means to be saved by Jesus.

And for this, we must allow Him to reach us where our sin is. It is in a very surprising, very disconcerting, very overwhelming way that it is precisely where we are most in rebellion against God, where we are most distant, where we are most hidden from God… it is there that the Lord can truly reveal Himself because He comes to save us, because He comes to make us pass from darkness to light, because He makes us pass from death to life, because He makes us pass from the sadness of sin to the joy of charity. And when we set out to follow Christ, we can experience that we are leaving behind the sadness and worries that inhabited us, because trust in the Lord makes us live things differently by making us look at them differently, and because the hope of Heaven changes everything in our history. We know where we are walking, and we know how the choices we make here below affect our eternal destiny, that we can prepare ourselves now for this ultimate encounter; and that it is even this ultimate encounter with Christ the Savior, when we pass from life to death, which gives meaning to our entire journey.

But this journey also encounters challenges. We heard this in today's readings, whether it was Peter who was to find himself imprisoned, or Paul who also spoke of the difficulties he encountered—he would set them out much more broadly in the second letter to the Corinthians. And there he says: “All have forsaken me, but the Lord has helped me. I was rescued from the lion’s jaws; the Lord will rescue me again from all that is being done to harm me.”

We are disciples of the Crucified One. Inevitably, when we follow Jesus, when we allow ourselves to be enlightened by him, when we experience this conversion which is metanoia in Greek — which means first of all a change of mind, looking at things as God sees them. And God knows that today, God continues to see them the right way, in our world which has turned them all or almost all upside down… whether it be the meaning of masculinity, femininity, the meaning of marriage, the meaning of education, the meaning of freedom. This “universal conspiracy against silence” of which Bernanos spoke, which means that we must sometimes fight with ourselves to extinguish everything and remain in silence where time sometimes seems so long. Yes, moving forward in the footsteps of Christ makes us experience trials. And there, I was only speaking of trials which are ultimately internal to us, but we can also encounter opposition, slander. We can also, unfortunately, sometimes encounter hatred. All these trials of the disciples of Jesus lead us to grow in faith, hope and charity. The apostles are unanimous, Peter, Paul, James, John, in telling us in their Letters that trials make faith grow, that trials verify the quality of our faith and that we must therefore rejoice in trials, because they are an opportunity to grow in holiness.

The question Jesus asks the disciples is not a collection of subjective feelings. Jesus is not conducting an opinion poll. The question is precise, even if it is often mistranslated. The question is very precisely in the Greek: Who do you say I am? And this question is not just a catechism question: Do I have the right answer? We need to broaden this question: What does my life say about Jesus? I looked in the writings of Saint Teresa, I did not find any reference to this Gospel. But Teresa's whole life answers this question, Teresa's whole life proclaims who Jesus is.

He is the merciful Savior!

He is the one who is always with us.

He is the one who leads us from death to life.

He is the one who leads us to the Father.

He is the one we can trust completely.

In her writings, whether in her letters, her manuscripts, her poems, her prayers, her pious recreations and the conversations noted down on the fly by her sisters, everything speaks to us of Jesus the Savior. And the whole life of Thérèse speaks to us of Jesus the Savior. We must truly desire that it be so in each of our lives.

This question of Jesus “Who do you say I am?” can serve us, I would even say must serve us, as an examination of conscience.

Today, what does my life say about Jesus?

Those who met me, what were they able to understand about Jesus through me? Not because I spoke to them about Jesus, but because I sought to love them as Jesus loved us. It is not a question of making a spectacle of ourselves, it is not a question of wanting to lecture anyone. It is a question, through the Holy Spirit who is given to us, with the help of the sacraments, by constantly meditating on the Holy Scriptures, it is a question of loving as Jesus loved us and of becoming ourselves Gospels in flesh and blood that our contemporaries can decipher and that one day, they can ask the question: Why do you live like this? And then we will be able to say: it is because of Jesus or it is thanks to Jesus.

Yes, brothers and sisters, as we celebrate the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, let us give thanks to God because the Lord called us, chose us, established us, and sent us out so that we might bear fruit and that our fruit might endure. This fruit of the Spirit is, first and foremost, the joy of being saved and the charity that flows from it.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine