Year of Saint Paul, June 28, 2007

Excerpt from Homily, Vespers on the Eve of Saints Peter & Paul, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI

"This Basilica, which has seen events of profound ecumenical significance, reminds us how important it is to pray together for the gift of unity, that unity for which St. Peter and St. Paul offered their existence up to the supreme sacrifice of their own blood.

A very old tradition, which goes back to apostolic times, recounts that not far from here was where they had their last encounter before martyrdom. They were said to have embraced each other, and to have blessed each other reciprocally. They are depicted on the main door of this Basilica in the scene of their martyrdom.

From the very beginning then, Christian tradition has considered Peter and Paul inseparable, even if they each had a different mission to fulfill. Peter first confessed his faith in Christ; Paul received the gift of being able to plumb the profundity of its richness. Peter founded the first Christian community coming from the chosen people; Paul became the apostle of the gentiles. With different charisms, they worked for a single cause: building the Church of Christ.

In the Readings, the liturgy offers for our meditation a well-known text of St. Augustine: "Only one day is consecrated to the feast of the two apostles. But they were also a single unit. Even if they were martyred on different days, they were one. Peter went ahead, Paul followed...Thus we celebrate this feast day, consecrated for us by the blood of these apostles" (Disc. 295, 7-8).

And St. Leo the Great commented: "Of their merits and their virtues - which were superior from all accounts - we cannot think of anything contradictory or divisive, because election had made them equal, their efforts similar and their end alike" (In natali apostol., 69, 6-7).

In Rome, the link that gave Peter and Paul a common mission has assumed from the first centuries a very specific significance. Like the mythical brothers Romulus and Remus, attributed with the founding of Rome, Peter and Paul likewise are considered as founders of the Church of Rome.

Leo the Great said in this respect, addressing the city: "These are your holy fathers, your true shepherds, who, to make you worthy of the kingdom the heavens, had built very well and felicitously, doing their best to lay down the foundations of your walls" (Omelie 82,7).

As much as they were humanly very different from each other, and even if their relationship was not without tensions, Peter and Paul therefore appear as the initiators of a new city, as a concretization of a new and authentic way of being brothers, made possible by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so we can say that today the Church of Rome celebrates its birthday, inasmuch as the two Apostles had laid down its foundations. Moreover, Rome now realizes with greater awareness that is its mission and its grandeur.

St. John Chrysostom writes that "the sky is not as bright when the sun sheds its rays as the city of Rome which radiates the splendor of those burning torches (Peter and Paul) through all the world...This the reason why we love this city...for these two pillars of the Church" (Comm. a Rm 32).

We will remember the apostle Peter more particularly tomorrow, when we celebrate the divine Sacrifice in the Vatican Basilica built on the place where he was martyred. But tonight, we look at St. Paul, whose relics are guarded with great veneration in this Basilica."

..."May he guide and protect us in this bimillennial celebration, helping us to progress in our humble and sincere quest for full unity of all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Amen. "

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