Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Today we celebrate a double feast, the two most important apostles, saint Peter and saint Paul. We have two other feasts for each saint, the conversion of saint Paul and the chair of saint Peter. Why do we put them together in one feast? Because some people wanted to separate them, to oppose one against the other, to create a conflict. The devil loves confussion and disunity to do his work. Peter preached to the Jews and Paul to the gentiles. At the beginning of the Church there was a danger of schism, a separation between both groups, mainly from the Jews, demanding the gentiles to follow Jewish customs. Both apostles managed to keep the Church together.

If you go to saint Peter’s basilica in Rome, in front of the facade you will see two big marble statues, much bigger than a life size, five metres tall, saint Peter with the keys and saint Paul with the book and the sword. Even though it is a church built on top of saint Peter’s tomb, the popes wanted to emphasise the collaboration between both, as the two foundational stones on where Jesus’ Church is built. Saint Peter with his keys opens the doors of heaven for us, and saint Paul teaches the faith with his book, and defends and enlarges the Christian community with his sword.

These are the traditional symbols of these two saints. Saint Peter keeps two keys in his hand, one silver plated and the other gold plated. The golden one aludes to the power in heaven; the silver one signifies the authority on earth. You can see both keys in the pope’s coat of arms. Saint Paul holds in his right hand a long sword for two reasons: first, he was beheaded by a sword, the instrument of his martyrdom, and secondly, the sword signifies the Word of God, of which Paul was a tireless preacher. We say that Sacred Scripture is a double edged sword, that penetrates our souls and cuts through our excuses and sins. A double edged sword is very dangerous: you can injure others, but also hurt yourself. It has a doubled effect.

Saint Peter is the first apostle and saint Paul is the one who did most for the Church, to expand and develop it. Both were martyred in Rome. We have another basilica in Rome dedicated to saint Paul, the second largest church after saint Peter’s, outside the walls of the city. There you can see a unique series of portraits in mosaic of all the popes from Peter to the present holder of the office. It is customary for the church to shine a spotlight on the portrait of the present pope.

The first reading of the Mass comes from the Acts of the apostles were saint Peter heals a man paralytic from birth. The second reading is from the letter of saint Paul to the Galatians, where he explains that after his conversion, he went to Jerusalem to talk to Peter. The Gospel narrates the scene where Jesus asked Peter, after the second miraculous catch of fish, if he loved him more than the others. Both apostles loved Jesus so much to the point of giving up their lives for him.

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Corpus Christi

Today we celebrate the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We look at the amazing miracle that happens every day, when the priest pronounces the words of consecration during the Mass, and transforms the substances of bread and wine into the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We will never be able to comprehend totally the mystery we are contemplating.

I’d like to look at this reality from the point of view of the trascendentals, four ways we share of a certain resemblance with God, which reflects his infinite perfection. The first one is truth: everything that it is, has to be true. It is very important for us to know what the Eucharist is. Most of the indifference we find today in Catholics around the Eucharist is due to ignorance. We cannot value what we don’t know. How can we come more often to visit him, if we think that the host is a symbol? How can we adore Jesus in the tabernacle, if we think that he is not there? There, in the tabernacle, hidden to our eyes is the truth itself.

The second one is goodness: whatever it is, has some element of goodness, for the fact of being. If Jesus is here, this church should be the most important place of our entire existence. It has to have an influence on our lives. His presence cannot leave us the same. This is why all saints have drawn from the Eucharist the energy that moved them forward, to perform the amazing feats they have accomplished. All actions towards the poor and the needy, should be based upon hours of adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament, recognising Jesus in the tabernacle, welcoming Jesus in the homeless.

The third one is beauty: to be beautiful, first we need to exist. We try to surround the Eucharist with the most expensive and beautiful things we have, showing to the Lord that we believe in his physical presence. The churches, the altars, the reredos, all the things we use for the Mass, the vestmens, the linen and the sacred vesels, express the love we have for him, even though whatever we offer to him will never be good enough for his majesty. It is true that he doesn’t need all we do for him, but we are human beings, and we normally express our love to our loved ones with gold and precious stones. Jesus was very happy when a woman used the whole jar of an expensive perfume to anoint his body.

The fourth one is unity. Very much related to being, anything that it is, either conserves its unity or disappears. Jesus is the head of the Church and all of us are members of his body. Therefore we are all united in the Eucharist. Where Jesus is, there is the Church, and we are all with him. This is why when we go to communion, we enter into the most intimate posible union: we eat him, his body becomes part of ours. When Saint Monica was dying, she asked her son Saint Augustine to remember her at the table of the Lord. In every Mass we remember the living and the dead. We are all seated together to renew the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

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Holy Trinity

Nowadays sciences have grown exponentially. The desire to know our world, to comprehend the laws of nature, has pushed our knowledge to limits never experienced before. We have an intellectual curiosity that has filled the internet with almost an infinite amount of information. AI is using all this data to challenge us, to produce better outcomes, to simulate our brains. It is developing capabilities unknown to us. But we forget that we are created for God, that our end is to know and love God for all eternity. And this endeavour should begin here.

All the great things here on earth are only sparks of the divine nature. Everything created has some resemblance of God its author. If we are in awe with the universe, imagine who he is who created it. God has allowed us to know him and develop a relationship with him. It is a pity we spend so much time doing other things, waisting our lives in things that are not important. They say that thirty percent of the data used in the internet is wasted watching pornography. Sex is the god of our times. Porn only makes us depressed and anxious, because it is a passing pleasure that can never make us happy. The devil has caught us with this virtual addiction and we need to become free. It destroys lives, relationships and marriages. We are made for more. When are we going to wake up? The search for true happiness, for God dwelling in our souls, can help us to cut this chain and make us free.

We are so caught up in the things of this world that we forget the world to come. People only believe what they can experience with their senses and they don’t realise that we can access eternity from here. We forget that we have a direct line to God. He is at our finger tips, more accessible than our mobile phones, without the problems of low battery or lack of coverage. We forget that we have the Holy Trinity in our soul unless we push him away. Saint Augustine used to say that he is inside of us, but we are looking for him outside.

Today’s feast day is a reminder of this mystery. We can enter into the inner life of God, and contemplate the relationship between the three persons of the Holy Trinity. We are invited to participate in the constant, infinite, amazing, fluid life of love among the Father, the Son and and the Holy Spirit. We are called to differentiate the three persons, even though they are only one God and it is a very difficult task. Every year we have a new opportunity to go deeper and try to get inspiration from God. We all have an inner desire to see more.

We are children of the Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus, spouses of the Paraclete. We have three kinds of relationships with God, to access the divinity from three different angles, to help us to enter into the mystery the Holy Trinity. We ask Mary, daughter of God the Father, mother of God the Son, spouse of the Holy Spirit, to give us a hand.

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