Cleaving Souls

Peter and Paul. Oil and water. The keys that bind versus the sword of liberation. The importance of tradition versus the imperatives of a Gospel that calls us above and beyond the past. The old man who was set in his ways versus the mercurial, young man one who could be all things to all people. The cautious man who shied away from risk versus the bold gambler. The bartering fisherman who demanded his money versus the theology student who chased after God without counting the cost. The immovable Chair of St. Peter versus the restless man on horseback ... and in boats and trekking across continents on land and always peeling back and encountering and discovering in the endless process of conversion to Christ.

In the El Greco painting that accompanies this reflection, we see Peter in undyed cloth bespeaking an orthodox Judaism that is allergic to the world versus the brightly arrayed Paul, reflecting Gentile life as Matteo Ricci, SJ dressed as a Chinese Mandarin, would many centuries later. Peter frowns looking down and away from Paul. Paul looks away from Peter with his eyes set on a distant land. They embrace, yet they do not embrace. They need each other, yet reject each other's ministries and beliefs again and again.

For St. Peter, St. Paul had been a double-threat as an enemy. First, St. Paul had attacked St. Peter and his colleagues from the far right-wing of the religious establishment — a young man who had sworn blood oaths to round up and stone or imprison every member of these followers of Jesus. Many scholars believe that St. Paul actually held the tunics and cloaks of the man who had killed St. Stephen.

Then, St. Paul attacked Peter and his fellows from the far left-wing of the young Church, advancing a radically liberal theology. Paul argued that circumcision was not necessary! that the kosher laws did not apply! that Jewish religious observances need not be practiced! Think of what this meant to men like St. Peter and St. James the Just. They were deeply conservative men, men who continued to live and minister in Jerusalem, the very heart of Judaism. They would have continued to worship in the Temple. And then St. Paul enjoined the Jerusalem Church to convoke the first Ecumenical Council of the Church, the Council of Jerusalem (48 A.D.). Under discussion was nothing less than the validity of the Mosaic Law! One could scarcely conceive of a more radical agenda. Shall everything now be called into question?! Yet, St. James the Just, Bishop of Jerusalem, and (very likely) St. Peter did receive St. Paul and did grant certain concessions, namely

All of these powerful forces seemed to reside within the breasts of St. Peter and St. Paul as opposing, contending opposites. Within their own persons — their backgrounds and formation, their personalities, their areas of authority in ministry. Recall that St. Paul was a student of Gamaliel, perhaps his protegee. Saul of Tarsus commanded great respect among those of the religious establishment, perhaps bowing to him when he passed. Simon bar Jonah was a rough-cut fisherman working on the docks. Very different personalities. In these two men was summed up all that young Church struggled with and every class within that Church. Yet, they refrained from demonizing each other. They refrained from attacking each other's persons. They stuck to the issues, refusing to hit below the belt. They listened to each other for meritorious ideas, scanning for God's will in all things ... however it might be discovered, no matter who God's messenger might be. And we in this era of constant conflict and rancor and personal attack ought to attend carefully to the example of these great men.

We live at a time when a woman's children are humiliated and ejected with their mother from a family restaurant simply because she works for "the other side." I can remember when the most liberal member of Congress, Thomas P. O'Neill, the Speaker of the House, would battle hammer-and-tongs with the conservatives. Yet, the phone would ring in mid-morning: "Tip, it's Ronnie Reagan. Let's push back the schedule and have lunch today. And there would stories and drinks and laughs .... and perhaps a little "horse trading." Why did they do this? Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi having a cordial lunch with President Trump today? Why did they do this? Because they were decent. And I was taught by grandparents that "it possible to disagree without being disagreeable."

We live at a time when St. Peter and his "arch-enemy" St. Paul ought to become our patrons, praying for us. They did not destroy the young Church because they had differing visions for its identity and purposes. They did not demonize each other, vilifying the other, much less their families, because they disagreed. The Church and the world has always been a place for disagreement and dissent. But during such a time, we ought to be guided from the Archbishop of the aptly named city of Split, Macro Antonio de Dominis, who left us with words we can all live by: "Concerning things that cannot change, unity. In things that are open to change, liberty. In all things, charity." (In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.)

Today, we commemorate the opposing geniuses of these two spirits, Ss. Peter and Paul, both essential, both needed, both chosen. In their greatness, we celebrate their holy lives and vocation today as a pair, not as solitaries. Yes, they are honored on other days, singly, but it is their unity in opposites that is celebrated today. There is the unity of the Church!

May I borrow from the St. Paul's letter to the Church at Ephesus? The Church we know is really an outline traced upon the earth, the outline of a Person Who is called both the Son of God and the Son of Man. It is made of many parts as it is filled out by the holy lives of its Body members, coming to a fullness in time which St. Paul calls the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:13). Every part is necessary, and we always call to mind the fullness of Cardinal de Lubac's imperative: "the Catholic spirit is both-and, not either-or." Yet, the Body is injured, made ill, even fatally ill, if its cells should become cancerous. For each cell has the power to fill the other cells around it either with grave contagion or with wholesomeness and health. The cells around us can lift us up or drag us down. Unredeemed cells, spreading their cancer without let, have the power to infect the entire Church. And a continued unwillingness to repent and be healed must lead at one point to surgery, with parts of the Body being removed so that the whole is protected.

Paul rightly taught that the Body of Christ, as it grows to full stature in the broken world, must be a healthy Body, made up of wholesome cells that uplift one another and taking good nutrition, not with cells that spread cancer or who seek to feed on poison. All are welcome to enter this Body and receive nutrition and be healed and enter life. But no cell has the right to demand a new kind of anatomy or to redefine what good means.

Today, we celebrate two lives that were not perfect lives. St. Peter betrayed the Lord on three different occasions, which each offense being more serious than the other. He betrayed the condemned Lord in the High Priest courtyard. He betrayed the Risen Christ. (I take issue with the translation this morning. Peter did not say that he loved the Lord. He did not use the verb that Jesus demanded three times, whose noun form is agape, but rather rejected sacrificial love offering instead three times philia, or dutifulness.) And finally he abandoned his flock in Rome according to Sacred Tradition. St. Paul persecuted the young Church and perhaps participated in the murder of the saints. They were far from perfect, which reminds us that God has need of each of us, who are also far from perfect. He needs us. For He has great things to do. And the night is far spent. He is calling you even now. And your vocation may be the one that He will depend on most here in this twilight time.

We must listen. We must obey. We must set aside our petty problems and differences and imperfections that we may be all that we possibly can be for His holy purposes.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.