St. Peter and St. Paul, apostles, MT 16,13-19

Introduction

Can there be anything more opposite than fire and water? Can. It’s fire and ice. It might seem that these opposites cannot be combined: either the fire melts the ice or the water from the ice extinguishes the fire. And yet … Just look at the consequences of a hailstorm. Nothing is able to 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 background, education and temperament as fire and ice. Peter, hard as a rock – and Paul, wandering the world at that time like a wave of fire. And yet God united them together, God chose them to build the Church. And in the end, they succeeded thanks to God’s power, which can combine fire and ice into one.

Peter came from Bethesda, a small village on Lake Gennesaret. It is difficult for Peter to speak of any special education, and his Galilean origins compelled others to behave a little arrogantly (after all, it was said, “Can something good come from Galilee?”). Peter was a simple fisherman from the remote village of the then empire. He was married – the Gospel mentions the healing of his mother-in-law. Paul came from Tarsus – the metropolis, which at that time consisted of about two hundred thousand inhabitants. He came from the tribe of Benjamin, where the first king of Israel came. Paul was born a Roman citizen, for which he was granted specific privileges. He weaved carpets, but he was also very educated.

He was an ardent believer in Judaism, ready to send all apostates to their deaths. Among these apostates he also included the followers of the emerging Church of Christ, headed by St. Peter. When one of them was stoned, Stephen, Paul, who was too young to officially join the stonemasons, guarded their clothes. Paul never met Jesus before His Passion and Resurrection. His conversion to faith was the result of a later encounter with the Son of God. The revelation of Christ surrounded by light knocked him to his knees, blinded him, and when Paul’s sight returned, his life changed from the ground up. With a new ,, message”, which he had previously considered heresy, he reached the farthest corners of the empire at the time. He never started a family – he obeyed the Gospel all his life.

Peter’s journey to Jesus was not so spectacular, he accompanied Jesus from the very beginning of His teaching. Christ finally liked him very much: he commanded him to come to him by 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 from a fish parrot. Peter was in the group of the closest disciples who always accompanied Jesus. When Jesus washed his feet in the supper, he began with Peter, and also set him by his side during the Last Supper. It was Peter who took the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant in defense of his Master, and then went to the high priest’s courtyard, where he managed to penetrate thanks to John’s protection. Here he experienced something exactly the opposite of what Paul experiences in Damascus: Paul, the persecutor, became a zealous disciple, while Peter, the closest disciple, became a traitor. Fortunately, he was able to cry hot.

Jesus looked at him with love, and Peter could already honestly answer Christ’s question after Jesus’ resurrection: “Lord, you know that I love you.” Some people are of the opinion that these two individuals could not work together, in one place, that they differed so much in their nature. However, we know that there has been a strong exchange of views between them regarding Gentile Christians. But legend has it that they last met in Rome, in prison. There they were to spend some time together, then on the same day, but in different places they sacrificed their lives for Christ. From St. Peter and St. We can learn from Paul that our history is not written by the conformity of our characters, but by God, who knows how to combine fire and ice to create a force capable of proving unimaginable things.