Homily for Solemnity of Sts. Peter & Paul

Homily for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter & Paul

June 29, 2025
Acts 12: 1-11
Ps 34: 1-8
2 Tim 4: 6-8, 17-18
Matt 16: 13-19
The Fountains, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Assumption, Bronx

Attributed to Giuseppe Vermiglio

“The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against my Church” (Matt 16: 18).

By church law, every 5 years every bishop must go to Rome—they go in national or regional groups—to the thresholds of the apostles Peter and Paul, ad limina apostolorum in Latin.  For these ad limina visits, they meet as groups and individually with the Holy Father, Peter’s successor, to talk about their dioceses, to renew their commitment to leading their churches in the gospel faith handed on from Christ thru the apostles.  The Holy Father is the custodian not only of the sacred tombs of Peter and Paul but also of the faith they preached.

Every June 29, new metropolitan archbishops go to Rome to be invested by the Pope with the pallium, a small, necklace like stole or vestment woven from lamb’s wool, embossed with black crosses, that symbolizes both their authority in their church provinces and their unity with Peter’s successor.  This year the 48 new archbishops from around the world include the archbishops of Boston, Cincinnati, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Omaha, and Washington.

The authority of the apostles, Peter and Paul in particular, is the guarantee of Christ’s teaching, of gospel truth, and the unity of Christ’s Church.

The theme word of our Scriptures today was “rescue.”  “I know for certain that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me,” Peter says to himself after his escape from prison and execution (Acts 12:11).  The psalmist exclaims, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them” (34:8).  Late in life, Paul writes to his disciple Timothy, “The Lord stood by me and gave me strength….  I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.  The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat and bring me safe to his heavenly Kingdom” (2 Tim 4:17-18).  Jesus assures Peter, the rock foundation of the Church he will establish, that “the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”

“Netherworld” in Matthew’s Greek is hades, which may also be rendered as “underworld,” “place of the dead,” simply “death,” as in several translations of the New Testament, and even “hell,” as in the Douay-Rheims translation that many of us grew up with and in the Apostles Creed.

Peter’s faith in Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16) will prevail over all the powers of death and of the Lord of Death, Satan, hell’s ruler.  Our gospel faith will rescue the followers of Jesus Christ from death, from the grasp of Satan, “from the lion’s mouth.”  In that last phrase, Paul perhaps means being rescued from condemnation by Nero, a rescue that proved only temporary; he was eventually condemned for being a Christian, beheaded in 67 during Nero’s persecution, and buried where the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls now stands.  But “from the lion’s mouth” also means his deliverance from the Devil, who, in the words of St. Peter’s 1st Letter, “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (5:8).

Our Lord Jesus Christ triumphed over the netherworld and all the powers of hell.  His teaching was handed on by Sts. Peter and Paul, whose teaching is still preserved and handed on by the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church under the authority of the bishop of Rome, Peter’s successor.  In union with the Pope, we stand at the threshold of the apostles, at the gates of heaven.  In union with Peter, the rock of our faith, “the Lord will rescue [us] from every evil threat and bring [us] safe to his heavenly Kingdom.”