Saints Peter and Paul
The twenty-ninth of June is a very important feast-day in the Orthodox Church: the feast of the two apostles of Christ who with justice can be considered the founders of the Christian faith, Saints Peter and Paul. These deeply-flawed, deeply-human men were both, in spite of their flaws, quite literally embraced by the Divine in the flesh, and were moved to bear the cosmos-upending message of the Incarnation, the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ all the way from the cradle of Christ’s life in Roman-occupied Palestine to the chilliest and most remote nether regions of the globe. These two luminaries and bearers of this personal truth to humankind embrace and yoke together in faith regions as diverse as Britain and Syria. The holy images of the Leaders of the Apostles justly occupy a central pride of place in the Synaxis icons of both Great Britain and Antioch. It is therefore with particular regard to their indelible traces upon both sites of witness that I offer this, I am sure, wholly-inadequate hagiographical treatment for today’s feast.
Saint Peter was among the four closest Apostles to Christ our Lord. He was born Šim‘ôn bar Yônâh, and made his living as a fisherman at Bethsaida in al-Jawlân alongside his brother Andrew. The two brothers had some differences, however. They were raised in what seems to have been a Hellenised or a multicultural household, as witnessed by the fact that Šim‘ôn’s given name is clearly Semitic while Andrew’s is Greek. Also, although Saint Andrew was not married, while Saint Peter, by the account of the Synoptic Gospels, was: he had married a woman of Capernaum, where he moved after his wedding. Saint Andrew was among the disciples of John the Forerunner and was drawn to Saint John’s preaching of repentance and renunciation. When Jesus Christ went to the Sea of Galilee, he performed a miracle whereby the two fishermen caught a huge number of fish, and then called to Andrew and Peter on the shore, saying: ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ (Matthew 4:19) John’s account (John 1:35-42) has it that he was introduced to Christ later by his brother Andrew.
Saint Peter’s personality shines through lucidly in all of the Gospel accounts, and the picture they paint of him is not always flattering. On the one hand, Saint Peter is among the closest of Jesus’s disciples, implicitly trusted: indeed, the very cognomen ‘Peter’, from the Greek kēphas κηφᾶς, means ‘stone’. He is consistently shown to be in Christ’s ‘inner circle’ of disciples, along with James and John the sons of Zebedee. He is mentioned first among the apostles in the lists given in the New Testament. Saint Peter was also present at important moments in the life and ministry of Christ: the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, for instance (Mark 9:2-8); also the raising of Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:40-56); and the prayer in the garden at Gethsemane (Matt 26:36-56). He is even shown to have walked on water (briefly) at Christ’s command (Matt 14:22-31).
On the other hand, Saint Peter is shown to have some human and relatable flaws. He was exuberant, impulsive, brash and even hot-headed. Though this cannot be definitively proven, he may have been a member of the Sicarii, as possibly indicated by his wielding a knife as a weapon as he was doing on the night Jesus was arrested (John 18:10-11). Peter is quick to leap to conclusions (Matt 16), eager to take the initiative (Luke 5) and fiercely jealous and desiring of Christ’s love (John 13). But he also has a tendency to lose heart, as he did when walking across the water to Jesus, and even to abandon and deny Christ after his arrest (Matt 26:69-75).
In the wake of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ our God, Peter – true to his brash and impulsive character – ran to Christ’s empty tomb and was the first to enter it (John 20:1-9), although the Myrrhbearing Women had seen it before him. The risen Christ showed Himself in person first to Peter (1 Cor 15:5), and afterwards to the Twelve. When Christ asked Peter if he loved Him, and each time Peter said yes, Christ bade him to ‘feed my sheep’ (John 21:15-17): that is to say, to care for the physical and spiritual wellbeing of His disciples. At Holy Pentacost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples, it was Saint Peter who addressed the ‘men of Judæa’ in defence of the followers of Christ (Acts 2:14).
Saint Peter was one of the foremost leaders of the early Church. He was twice arraigned by the Sanhedrin for preaching the risen Christ (Acts 5:17-31 and Acts 12:3-19), was cast into prison and both times escaped with the help of an angel of God. His eloquence was a matter of some wonderment to the religious authorities, because he was considered ‘unlearned and ignorant’ (Acts 4:13). Saint Peter had to share the limelight in the early Church community with the more popular Saint James the Brother of the Lord, who was chosen as the first Bishop of the Church in Jerusalem. Saint James was apparently a fairly ‘conservative’ figure in the early Church, who believed in the necessity of following the entirety of the Jewish law, including the purity codes. Saint Peter, on the other hand, was much readier to speak to and deliver the good news to Gentiles: Luke describes his encounter with Cornelius, which is the first described baptism of a Gentile (Acts 10:1-35).
Saint Peter travelled to many places to deliver the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection to the peoples of the world. He was the first Bishop of Antioch, a title which he held for seven years before he left it in the hands of Saint Euōdias. He spent some time in the rather licentious and fractious city of Korinthos as well. He preached together with Saint Paul in Antioch, and later joined the other great Leader of the Apostles on his voyages.
The holy Apostle Peter ended up together with the holy Apostle Paul in the capital city of Rome itself. They founded in the heart of the cruel Empire that had put our Saviour to death, a Church that would overcome that Empire in the radical spirit of that same Saviour’s love. According to Church tradition, they were both martyred in Rome in the year 67.
Peter and Paul in Antioch
Saint Paul, the other great leader of the Apostles, had a very different journey from Saint Peter. They originally despised each other, then distrusted each other, and finally ended their journey together as companions and friends, comrades and co-martyrs. Saint Paul began his life as Saul (Heb. Šā’ūl שאול, the same as the name of the first Old Testament King). He was born into the Tribe of Benjamin, and belonged to the faction of the Perušim in the Second Temple religion. Saint Luke describes him as a tent-maker (Acts 18:3), and gives his place of origin as Tarsus in Asia Minor (Acts 9:11). He was well-educated and of high status, being a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37-38).
At first he was implacably and mortally hostile to the followers of Christ. He was present at the stoning of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, as described in Acts 7:58. Still breathing threats and slaughter against the followers of the Way, he undertook a journey to Damascus in order to confer with other leaders of the Perušim on how to arrest followers of Christ and bring them to Jerusalem. On the way to Damascus, Saint Paul beheld a ‘light from heaven’ and heard a voice calling to him: ‘Saul, Saul – why persecutest thou me?’ He fell upon his face, asked whom it was who spoke to him, and then asked what he must do: and Jesus revealed Himself to Saul, and told him to proceed into Damascus. The men who were with him heard the voice but saw nothing, but when they took Saul up from the ground they were all amazed to find him stricken blind.
Saul was healed by a certain of Christ at Antioch, Saint Ananias. Ananias was at first sceptical about healing such a bloody and avowed foe of the Church, but what God had bidden him to do, he did. In the name of Christ he fed Saul and restored sight to his eyes. After this, Saul was baptised (Acts 9:18). Later in the Book of Acts, in the thirteenth chapter, Saul is renamed as Paúlos, which comes from the Latin word for ‘little’ or ‘humble’. Though Acts does not specify that he was renamed at his baptism, this seems a likely conclusion. The renaming does come out of a long Old Testament tradition of God giving uncomplimentary second names to His chosen people – for example, from Abram [Heb. ’Avrām אברם, ‘big father’] to Abraham [Heb. ’Avrāhām אברהם, ‘father of the runt’] or from Sarai [Heb. Sāray שרי, ‘my princes’] to Sarah [Heb. Sārāh שרה, ‘princess’ – pejorative in the sense of being an unwed woman without children].
Saint Paul, upon converting to Christianity, took to it with force and indefatigable drive. He was much more eager than Saint Peter – and certainly much more so than Saint James the Lord’s brother – to begin spreading the word of truth and the good news of the risen Christ among the Gentiles. Paul took the radical view that Hellenes and other non-Jews were capable of receiving the life and light promised by Christ without necessarily taking on the whole of the Jewish Law – particularly circumcision. This was the cause, it seems, of a bit of friction between Saints Peter and Paul when they met at Antioch, and the issue was resolved at the Council of Jerusalem, largely in Saint Paul’s favour. Thus, from Antioch, Saints Peter and Paul embarked on a truly universal mission to spread the word of Christ to all, and to make disciples of all nations.
Saint Paul then embarked on three long journeys that took him throughout the Eastern Mediterranean basin – and he was accompanied on these travels for the most part by Holy Apostle Barnabas, and later by Saint Peter as well. The legacy of these voyages may be attested in the numerous Epistles that the Holy Apostle wrote to the churches he founded in many of the places he visited: Ephesos, Korinthos, Philippoi, Thessaloniki, Galatia, Kolossai, Jerusalem and of course Rome (which he had not yet visited when he wrote his letter to them), as well as to individual people within the Church such as Apostle Timotheos of Macedonia, Apostle Titos of Crete and Apostle Philēmōn.
It was promised to Saint Paul by God, shortly after his conversion, that he would undergo great suffering on His account. This was indeed true. Not only numerous imprisonments, acts of physical torment and at least one chronic illness are recounted in his Epistles, but also – much more importantly – a passion of compassion, a suffering in camaraderie with a suffering mankind. The writing style of his Epistles reveal an author of deep learning in Jewish law and wisdom literature, and a letter-writer versed in the structural customs of contemporary Greco-Roman correspondence among the literate élite. However, he has a tendency to get ahead of himself in his enthusiasm, and his mode of expression is therefore often elliptical. The epistles also, more importantly, reveal a man sincerely and personally invested in the lives and spiritual existential welfare of the people in each of the churches he founded: well aware of their shortcomings and yet loving them all the same.
Saint Paul eventually went to Rome together with Saint Peter, and the two of them were killed in Rome in the year 67 – again, according to Church tradition – in the wave of anti-Christian persecutions in that city ordered by Emperor Nero. Before that time they may have journeyed to many other places within the Roman Empire. Although the church there dates only back to 604 AD, there is a pious tradition that Saint Paul ventured from Roman Spain through Armorica into Britain, and preached at Ludgate Hill where Saint Paul’s Cathedral now stands. And a tenth century legend dating to the works of the mediæval Greek hagiographer Simeōn Metaphrastēs (who borrows the cachet of Eusebius and his Ecclesiastical History) intimates that Saint Peter also spent some time in Britain, and made prophecies about the Roman church from the site of the abbey subsequently named for him, in Westminster.
Now, these tales of the visits of the holy leaders of the Apostles to the shores of Britain may or may not be embellishments of the high-mediæval sort, that were spun out over existing history and known scholarship in order to lend an air of antiquity and continuity to a poor outlying church on the barbarous fringes of Roman rule. But one thing is indeed certain: the universal ecclesiastical vision of these two great saints absolutely left room enough and more for the mission and conversion of this island to the sublime and transfiguring Truth of the Christian faith. The holy leaders of the Apostles Peter and Paul are a bridge which connects the great Gate of Saint Thomas in Antioch, where the two apostles met and disputed for the first time, with Ludgate Hill in Roman London where they were said to have been shortly before their martyrdom at Nero’s hands. This being so the Apostles Peter and Paul represent the fullness of the catholicity, the sobornost’, of the Orthodox Christian faith. Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, ministers of Christ and stewards of God’s Holy Mysteries, pray unto Christ our God for the salvation of us sinners!
Apolytikion for Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, Tone 4:
First-enthroned of the Apostles,
Teachers of the universe:
Entreat the Master of all
To grant peace to the world,
And to our souls great mercy!
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