Could anything be more opposite than fire and water? Can. It’s fire and ice. It might seem that these opposites cannot be combined: either the fire dissolves the ice, or the water from the ice extinguishes the fire. And yet … look at the consequences that a hailstorm will leave behind. Nothing can resist it: pieces of ice falling from the sky can destroy almost everything, and if something is saved, it is engulfed in flames ignited by lightning. Today we celebrate the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul – people who differed from each other in their social origin, education, and temperament, like fire and ice. Peter, hard as a rock – and Paul, wandering around the world at that time like a wave of fire. And yet God united them for joint action, and God chose them to build the Church. And they finally succeeded thanks to God’s power, which can combine fire and ice into one.
Peter came from Bethsaida, a small village located in Lake Gennesaret. It is difficult to talk about any special education with Peter, and his Galilean origin forced others to treat him a little condescendingly (, it was said: „whether something good can come from Galilee?“). Peter was a simple fisherman from a backwater village of the empire at the time. He was married. The Gospel mentions the healing of his mother-in-law. Paul came from Tarsus – a metropolis with about two hundred thousand inhabitants. He came from the tribe of Benjamin, from which the first king of Israel also came. Paul was born a Roman citizen and was granted specific privileges. He wove carpets, but he was also very educated. He was an ardent follower of Judaism, ready to send all apostates to their deaths. Among these apostates, he also included followers of the emerging Church of Christ, which St. Peter then headed. When one of them was stoned, Stephen, Paul, who was too young to join the stoners officially, guarded their clothes. Paul had never met Jesus before His passion and resurrection. His conversion to faith resulted from a later encounter with the Son of God. The revelation of Christ surrounded by light brought him to his knees, blinded him, and when Paul’s sight returned, his life changed from the ground up. With good news, which he previously considered heresy, he arrived in the farthest corners of the empire at the time. He never started a family – he submitted his whole life to the Gospel. Peter’s path to Jesus was not spectacular; he accompanied Jesus from the beginning of His teaching. Christ finally liked him significantly: he ordered him to come to him on the water, and when Peter doubted and began to drown, he saved him. He ordered him to pay the tax with a coin, which he miraculously pulled out of the fish muzzle. Peter was in the group of closest disciples who always accompanied Jesus. When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet in the supper room, he began with Peter and seated him by his side during the Last Supper. Peter took up the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and cut off the ear of his Master’s servant of the high priest, and then went to the high priest’s courtyard, where he managed to penetrate thanks to John’s patronage. Here he experienced something exactly opposite to what Paul would experience in Damascus: Paul the persecutor became a zealous disciple, while Peter, the closest disciple, became a traitor. Fortunately, he was able to cry bitterly.
Jesus looked at him with love, and Peter could already answer Christ’s question sincerely after Jesus’ resurrection: „Lord, You know that I love You“. Some people think these two individuals could not work together in one place, because they differed so much in their personalities. After all, we know that there was a strong exchange of views between them regarding Christians from the Gentiles. But legend has it that they last met in Rome, in prison. There, they were supposed to live together for a specific period, so that, on the same day, but in different places, they would sacrifice their lives for Christ. From St. Peter and St. Paul, we can learn from Paul that the agreement does not write our history of our natures, but by God, who knows how to combine fire and ice to create a force capable of proving unimaginable things.
