“A fisherman & a Pharisee” (Solemnity of Saints Peter & Paul, Apostles: Friday, June 29th, 2018: Acts 12.1-11; Ps. 34; 2 Tm. 4.6-18; St. Mt. 16.13-19)

Clay feet.  In 2014, a movie entitled "The Fault in our Stars" was released in theatres. It's the story of 2 American teenagers who meet in a support group for young people battling cancer. Sparks fly as Hazel and Augustus (literally) bump into each other. Becoming fast friends, they exchange and agree to read each other's favourite books. As Augustus arrives at the end of Hazel's favourite novel, he is intrigued to the point of strongly desiring to meet the author. Hazel undertakes an e-mail correspondence with – so she believes – the author himself, who is now living in the Netherlands. The illusive novelist agrees to meet the young lovebirds, and Hazel and Augustus take flight for Amsterdam. To their shock and surprise, once they arrive at the residence of the expatriated author, Augustus and his girlfriend discover that Hazel's e-mail correspondent had in fact been the novelist's secretary, and that the author himself is oblivious to their plan to meet with him. The two travelers quickly come to realize that the man Hazel's imagination had lionized turns out to be quite a jerk. Hazel's favourite author is not only extremely rude to the young couple, but he even makes light of their sickness. As they say, you should never meet your idols, for fear of discovering that they have feet of clay... 

Unlikely saints. So much for our idols, but what about the saints? Today's solemnity takes us all the way back to the first century, to the very beginnings of the Jesus movement. Peter and Paul – they are the two "indispensable men", those without whom early Christianity would never have emerged and thrived. Peter was the "head" of the 12 apostles and Paul was the first Christian theologian, as well as being an intrepid adventurer and missionary, establishing Christian communities throughout the Eastern end of the Roman Empire. Both of these men would meet their end in the capital of that empire, in the "eternal city" of Rome, thus laying the foundations - in their very blood – of what would become the Roman Catholic Church. It would be hard to find two men who are more unlike each other than Peter and Paul. Simon, a.k.a. "Peter", was a fisherman when Jesus called him to follow him – he was a blue-collar type, a hard-nosed and pragmatic man with dirt under his fingernails. Peter had the tendency to leap first and look later. Peter's foremost concern was "How does it work?" Saul of Tarsus, on the other hand, was a sophisticated scholar of the Scriptures and laws of Israel. He was one of those pretentious bookworms, the likes of whom Peter would probably have dismissed as never having done an honest day's work. The closest equivalent that we have in today's society to the profession of Saul the Pharisee is that of a lawyer. Saul spent his days in the ivory tower of Jewish jurisprudence, and his primary preoccupation was "Why are things right or wrong?" Of course, Saul's idealism did not prevent him from rolling up his sleeves and taking lethal action against those whom he perceived as undermining everything he believed the people of God should be doing. Indeed, in order to get Saul's attention, the risen Jesus had to knock him off his high horse, as many paintings of the Damascus Road encounter would lead us to believe. A fisherman and a Pharisee – Jesus entrusted his Church to these two rather colourful characters. Jesus had confidence in the potential of the "raw material" that was present in both men. As St. Augustine said, "Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." 

Troublesome team. It's interesting to take note of what Peter and Paul said about each other within the pages of the New Testament. Paul, for his part, only mentions Peter a few times in his letters, and it's never for the purposes of flattering his apostolic counterpart. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul identifies Peter as one of the Christian leaders that the Corinthians had met and who had become a rallying symbol for one of the many competing factions within the Corinthian church (cf. 1 Cor. 1.12). The other time that Paul mentions Peter is in his letter to the Galatians, where Paul recounts an episode in Antioch where he had confronted Peter publicly for his hypocrisy (cf. Gal. 2.11). Peter, for his part, only mentions Paul once, in his second letter. Peter refers to "our beloved brother Paul" and then goes on to say that Paul's writings are "hard to understand" (cf. 2 Peter 3.15-16). Peter and Paul – two strong-willed men who were by no means spared their fair share of faults, weaknesses, sins and unpleasant character traits. Peter and Paul – two all-too-human men who were chosen by Jesus to build his Church; two men whom Jesus loved and who came to love Jesus in return – to the point of laying down their lives for him.  

What about us? Although it may be tempting to use the fact that the saints were not made of marble or stained glass as an excuse for not having to imitate them, the fact remains that if Peter and Paul could become saints, there is still hope for you and I. Thomas Merton (1915-68), the American trappist monk and well-known spiritual writer, was walking the streets of New York City with a friend not long after his conversion to the Catholic Church. His friend asked Thomas want he wanted to do with his life. Thomas replied, "I want to be a good Catholic". His friend responded, "That's not the right answer; you should want to become a saint." Years later, after he had entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Merton would write, "For me, to be a saint means for me to be myself". For me to be a saint means for me to be myself. This is a sublime statement. We have a tendency to idolize certain people – probably without knowing who they actually are – and then denigrate ourselves, thinking that we'll never be able to be as good as them, or rather, as we think they are. This is a double mistake – first of all, we are ALL human, we ALL face struggles and we ALL have weaknesses to overcome. Secondly, by putting ourselves down, we get in the way of what the Lord wants to do in our lives. Jesus doesn't want to make us into someone else, he wants to perfect us, the people that he made us to be. Our personality, our desires, our talents are God-given. What God will do is to purify our personalities, our desires and our talents so that we become fruitful members of his body. The idea is to become fully who we are. This means being honest with God and with ourselves. We must accept that God loves us as we are, not as we should be. Because none of us are as we should be. The process of growing in holiness begins by looking at ourselves honestly – taking off our masks – and believing that this is the person that Jesus wants to make into a saint. Saints are like snowflakes – no two are exactly alike. We all reflect the beauty of God in a unique way. And yes, the only way for God's love to shine through us is for us to be broken. We must realize our dependence upon God; we must receive mercy in order to be equipped to give mercy. This is what we see on every page of the Gospels - the fatal flaw of the Pharisees was that they considered themselves as not being in need of God's mercy, and they were thus incapable to understand how Jesus could be so merciful to the tax collectors and sinners. It is God's mercy that will transform us into the women and men that God created us to be, reflecting his glory and love into the world. We are sinners, yes; but we are loved sinners, we are forgiven sinners. Let us live in light of that reality. Holiness is not something to be afraid of, or something that we should despair of ever attaining. Holiness is a gift from God, a gift to be embraced as our Lord continues his work of healing in each one of our lives. Amen.