Let Us Now Praise Holy Men!
Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 12:1-5,7-9; 1 Pet. 3:8-17;4:8-11; Mt. 16:13-19
Reflections from a Monk
“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men!” This is the title of an incredibly sad but beautifully illustrated book by James Agee and Walker Evans published in 1942. It’s about the destitute tenant families in the 1930’s working on declining cotton farms here in America. The title is taken from a section of the book of Ecclesiasticus or Sirach, which is not officially in the Jewish Bible even though it was originally written in Hebrew. Sirach praises the lives of Moses and David, Solomon and the prophet Elias for our inspiration and encouragement. But today we praise two other famous and illustrious holy men of the New Testament, and we celebrate their life and legacy.
After they were called, both St. Peter and St. Paul lived and died with an absolute, rock-solid dedication to Christ and the church. Simon Peter knew Jesus when he followed him there in ancient Palestine. He walked and sat with him, ate with him, heard him speak to the crowds, tasted those loaves and fish fed to the crowd in a miraculous way, saw Jesus transfigured into the most extraordinary human being who ever lived, heard the words of divine life, and saw the arrest and condemnation to death of the Son of God, spoke with the resurrected Christ, and received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Jesus had said to him: “Simon, son of John, do you love me – look after my lambs, …feed my sheep!” He earlier said, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you! …To you are given the keys of the kingdom of heaven!” These and other phrases define the foundations of the Church, the faith we follow, the Eucharist, and the forgiveness of sins.
St. Paul, by contrast, never walked and sat with Jesus, never ate with him or heard him speak to his followers and feed the multitudes. He was not there when Judas betrayed Jesus, or when Jesus died and was buried. Yet after all these events had long passed, and when Paul, whose name is Saul in Aramaic, was thrown from his horse and lay wounded on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus in his obsessive hunt for the followers of Christ, he heard the words: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” This had its intended effect! Later Paul wrote that nothing is really meaningful without the love of Christ. And this meant for him, as well as for us, the mystery and experience of the Cross and the Resurrection.
Both St. Peter and St. Paul were appalled by what they had done formerly to Christ, and we gather that they endured excruciating repentance and, at least for Peter, a life of many tears – not tears of shame, but of gratitude and love. Paul discarded his old life and sought distant refuge and healing from his physical and spiritual blindness. Each of these apostles gradually grew into the new self, a person robed in Christ and focused only on the magnificent love of Christ.
Peter courageously took up his daily Cross and yet was filled with the joy and energy of the Resurrected Christ, until he himself was crucified, and then he asked that it be upside down so as not to be equal to that of the Lord. Paul endured the crosses of persecution and harassment and disaster, but he was unstoppable in preaching the Resurrection, until he too was jailed and killed. They both left and lost everything, but they eventually received eternal life, the fullness of intimate union with Christ that begins on this earth and has no end. When we hear the words they wrote and which the church holds sacred and passes on to us, we are invited to live more intensely as they did, in the practice of the love of Christ and of one another.
These two great figures whom we honor today broke through stubborn and even bloody resistance to take the faith and the gospel beyond their own Jewish world to the outsiders, to both their Jewish compatriots and to the Gentiles. Both of them struggled within themselves, with others in the infant church, and even with each other, in order to preach the vision they were given: that salvation is not exclusive and burdensome as so many believed, but based on freedom and faith; as Peter said, “Your faith is more precious than gold!” And as Paul said, “Everyone who has faith may be justified with God.” This is their challenge to us, to proclaim this invitation to those who are searching and to the disabled, to the healthy and to the sick, to the down-trodden and wealthy alike.
Like Mary Magdalene, the two leaders of the apostles experienced the deep and warm forgiveness of Christ; and like the apostle Thomas, they felt the wounds of Christ. Like Christ they died to the world and to their ego selves even before death; they paid the great price, like I said, of all they had and were. But they obtained the pearl of great price, the treasure in the field, and they were transformed and enlightened. They came into possession of their own souls, as the book of Sirach would say. They became devoted servants of God, and loyal sons of God, and faithful friends of God through Christ. And in this way, finally, they proved themselves to be the epitome of apostles and disciples, true to their Lord and Master, fierce defenders and preachers of the gospel, and the most authoritative and famous figures in the Christian world.
Christ is in our midst!
