Solemnity Of Saints Peter And Paul, Apostles

At the narrowest part of the strait of Gibraltar, where two land masses meet (Africa and Europe, at the mouth of the Med), there are cliffs called the “Pillars of Hercules.” It was the end of the known world. On the old coins of Spain were depicted the two pillars of Hercules, with the Latin motto, "Ne plus ultra" - nothing beyond.

One guy from Stafford County, Virginia said:

I live on a one-way street that's also a dead end. I'm not sure how I got there.

As pillars of the Church, Saints Peter and Paul, were Authoritative figures: Peter the rock upon which Christ builds his church, and Paul, the greatest apostle. They propelled the church forward.

1). St. Paul— had a religious experience that was an unforgettable event.

Paul’s sense of being captured by Christ defined his spiritual experience.

Paul was overwhelmed by the pardon God gave him through the saving death of Christ. The wonder and appreciation of that pardon never left him.

Our motivations are tied to our experience of God’s forgiveness and acceptance. An experience of the love of God. Love was why St. Paul was successful because love is the disposition that makes communication successful.

He did not consider that the knowledge he had acquired from a dramatic encounter in anyway inferior to the knowledge of the earthly Jesus enjoyed by the original apostles.

He had personal encounter with the living and personal God—Cursillo weekend! It can be life-changing for many. Changes the chemistry of your spirit. ...sometimes alcoholics and others with addictions have had what are called vital spiritual experiences or phenomena. The Big Book says, “They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces in the lives of these folks are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.”

Quiet time

After his baptism, like Jesus, Paul went into the desert to pray. He traveled into the country of Arabia. Many believe that Paul spent approximately three years there. Paul gave himself to study, prayer, and meditation.

Testimony!

In chapter nine of Acts, the account is told in the third person, but in chapter 22, St. Paul tells the story from a first-person perspective.

The more we don’t negate our faith and the more we seek constant conversion, the more we can radiate simply and spontaneously our faith by a testimonial.

Evangelization by a testimonial is often the initial work in evangelization. It is one beggar telling another where to get food.

In his testimony, Paul was very transparent about his past. He had done wrong in his prior life of persecuting the early church. There was only one way he could ever win back their trust and that was to live a Christ-like life from that day forward.

Style

Post-conversion, he lived his Christian life with the same style and vigor as before. In 1 Cor. 15:10, he says that he labored harder than them all. It wasn’t his style that needed changing, it was his content.

Guidance

In Acts 18:9, the Risen Lord appeared to St. Paul in a dream to reassure him that whatever happens is part of his heaven-guided role. How often his Word, the Lord tells us that He will be with us.

Meetings

Afterwards, he did not fear meetings at work!

At the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15, fourteen years after Paul’s lightning bolt experience on the road to Damascus. And now, here he is, 14 years later setting doctrinal disputes reached through discussion and compromise…in a meeting no less.

2). St. Peter—The Prince of the Apostles. Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church. He learned from life experience.

A community of pagans welcomes the proclamation of the Gospel and Peter is an eyewitness to the descent of the Holy Spirit on them. First, he hesitates to make contact with what he had always considered "unclean" and then he suffers harsh criticism from the Christians of Jerusalem, shocked by the fact that their leader had eaten with the "uncircumcised" and had even baptized them.

It’s a moment of internal crisis that Pope Francis recalls with a hint of irony:

"That was unthinkable. If, for example, an expedition of Martians were to come tomorrow, and some of them were to come to us, here... Martians, right? Green, with that long nose and big ears, just like children paint them... And one says: 'But I want to be baptized!' What would happen?"

The early Christians ultimately came to realize that the message of Christ is universal – it is open to all people, not just to the Jews. So the point that Pope Francis was making was mainly about the universality of the Christian message, not about Martians. He was using the question about baptizing Martians to illustrate how difficult and strange the question of the universality of the Christian faith was for the early Church.