I happen to live just a short distance from St. Peter’s Square, and enjoy walking there in the evenings. One of the things that is so impressive about the Square and the Basilica of St. Peter’s is the scale, which is huge. The scale conveys an impressive sense of grandeur, the epic history of the Church, and her towering figures, Christ first, and then the apostles and saints. If you’re visited or seen pictures from the Square, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the two towering statues of St. Paul holding a sword (to the right looking at the Basilica) and St. Peter holding the key to the left. They stand 5.5 meters tall on pedestals that are themselves almost 5 meters tall. For those of you like me who didn’t grow up with the metric system, that’s nearly 35 feet tall! In fact, while walking by them one night, I overheard a little boy ask his mom, “who are those giants?”
What a great question.
As we know, our tradition holds both Saints, Peter and Paul, as the two apostolic pillars of the Church inspired by Jesus Christ, and just as they are depicted in this epic scale and heroic style by the sculptors, they were in so many ways larger than life. And yet, as they are each buried in Rome, we know that they were also ordinary, mortal human beings like you and me. They were imperfect. One was especially impulsive, ambitious and competitive, and an unfaithful disciple who failed Jesus in his most desperate hour. The other was a religious fanatic who sanctioned the murder of those who deviated from his faith. They each struggled in their attempts to understand and follow our Lord, they made mistakes along the way, and they even quarreled with one another about how to move forward in the spreading of the Gospel.
But none of this precluded God from loving them in Christ, and calling them beyond their weaknesses, their limits and liabilities to become something more. Yes, they were each transformed by that Divine love, and they also remained very much themselves. Even as Peter took up his role as the Rock and first of the disciples, the one whom the early Church in Jerusalem saw as the head of the community, he was still himself. He needed to rely on Christ’s direction in and through the Holy Spirit, and the council of his fellow believers to know how to navigate the challenges they faced: persecution, growth, and divisions based on theological differences.
Paul, the tireless missionary who ventured all around the world of the Mediterranean planting the seeds of the Gospel, cultivating believers into communities, raising leaders, tending to each fledgling church with his letters of instruction, discipline, and affection… he too was still very much himself. And just as the Gospel writers captured and conveyed Peter’s imperfections, Paul goes so far as to write openly about his vulnerability, his inner struggles, and his dependence on friends to co-labor in ministry.
Yes, these two men were heroic in their own ways, and they were human. And what made them heroic was not their strength, their knowledge, their rhetorical abilities, or anything close to their self-sufficiency. Anything but that. It was their willingness to be human, and to depend on God and others to accomplish their mission. It was their willingness to take incredible risks and step into the uncertainties before them, trusting that Christ would accompany them. It was their willingness to make mistakes while doing bold things, knowing that they would receive God’s forgiveness.
It was their ability to be themselves with such authenticity and openness that others who met them perceived just how close they were to Christ … they were like sheep who had the smell of the shepherd, the palpable sense of his love, his mercy, his friendship. By being themselves, they paradoxically shed the false pretenses of holiness that obstruct the face of Christ shining through them. It was this intimacy with Christ that made them the apostolic pillars they were. It didn’t make them perfect. It made them perfectly imperfect, and thus, fit to serve as leaders.
When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we won’t see 35 foot tall figures cast in heroic style. We will see ordinary people, perfectly imperfect, dependent on God and on others to fulfill our missions as disciples and as leaders. In fact, when we try too hard to be otherwise- giants or heroes, this is often what gets in the way of God working through us. We recall Paul saying, “rather, it is of my weakness that I will boast…”
On this solemnity of these two great apostles, we might ask ourselves, “have I, in the light of God’s love, accepted that it is through my humanity that holiness is more apparent, that is, through my vulnerability and dependence on God’s grace?” As leaders, do we hold as preciously as Peter and Paul did the stories of how Jesus has accompanied us along the way, instructed us, forgiven us, been faithful to us… these are the stories that give us the authority to evangelize others with our “good news,” of the ways God has been so good to us. And in our roles of authority, service, and responsibility, do we follow the examples of Peter and Paul, praying constantly to discern with others how to move forward in our missions? This is what it means to be a Church on the synodal way together.
With you on the way,
