Thought for the week - 28 June 2026

We celebrate today the feast of the Apostles Peter & Paul. Foremost among the followers of Christ. But what is it precisely about these two men that caused God to exalt them so?

On the surface there is much that separates these two saints. St. Peter was a poor and simple man, unlearned and uncultured; St. Paul was a Roma citizen, “a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee” one educated at the feet of Gamaliel. St. Peter was with our Lord from the very beginning of His public ministry and spent years at His side, witnessing all the events of the Gospel; St. Paul, on the other hand, did not so much as glimpse Christ while He walked on this earth prior to the ascension — St. Paul’s experience of our Savior was heavenly, rather than earthly. And so it was that St. Peter became the first of the apostles to confess Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God”; St. Paul, however, became the last, as he is counted as an Apostle.

Of course, there is much more that unites these two saints than separates them. The most obvious trait they share is their great zeal for God. St. Peter constantly showed his readiness to cast aside everything and follow Christ, from his first encounter with the Lord at the Sea of Galilee to the last; neither did he hesitate to lay down his life itself at the end. St. Paul, for his part, cast aside absolutely everything for which he had spent his entire life labouring before he met Christ, and thereafter lived with such zeal that nobody could doubt him when he proclaimed:

‘I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung’

Indeed, without such zeal their preaching could scarcely have had the power to “turn the world upside down” and to bring so many to the knowledge of Christ. And unless we ourselves learn to imitate their zeal, neither will we be able to become participants in their apostolic labours in our church. After all, if the love of Christ has not yet been able to utterly transform our own lives, how can we possibly expect to be able to help bring such transformation to the lives of those around us?

And yet there is a hard truth here, and one that we must always keep before the eyes of our hearts. Even such great zeal was utterly unable to keep St. Peter from denying his Lord, out of fear of a simple serving girl; it was likewise unable to keep St. Paul from his bloodthirsty persecution of the very Church of Christ. In fact, it was not only in spite of their great zeal that these two saints each suffered their most terrible fall, but it was even precisely because of it. St. Peter’s zeal was what led to his false boast that nothing could ever cause him to deny or abandon Christ; St. Paul’s zeal was, of course, the very reason he went to such great lengths to hunt down and destroy every Christian he could possibly find, whether in his own city or in any other. And so we must take to heart these lessons: that zeal is absolutely necessary for us in the spiritual life, and that nevertheless — at least on its own — it is also wholly insufficient.

It was through their own personal experience that each of these saints became able to confess: “this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptations, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief”. Zeal without repentance is nothing and it was through the power of this confession — the power of their profound repentance — that they went on to become the greatest preachers of the Gospel of Christ that this world has ever known. Because they both knew that if the Gospel could save them, then the Gospel can save anyone – and save me, can save you, can save us all from the corruption that surrounds us.

It is unavoidable that we should suffer falls; as we have seen, even the greatest of the apostles themselves could not avoid them. But what will come next? Will our sins cause us to hide from the face of God, as did Adam at the first, as did Judas at the last? Or will our sins cause us to run to Christ in repentance, as did St. Peter, and as did St. Paul? This is the great choice — and truly, the only choice — of our lives on this earth. And to make our choice rightly, we need precisely such profound humility and such unshakeable faith as they.

Let us not hide from the knowledge of our own sinfulness. But let us also never forget the boundless love and mercy of our God. Let us hold both of these two truths together, so that — when we inevitably suffer some fall — we will be able to run not away from God, but straight towards Him. If we can muster the faith and the humility and the courage to do this, then Christ our God will without any doubt turn even our worst defeats into victory — no less than He did for St. Peter, and no less than He did for St. Paul.