The solemn liturgy of saints Peter and Paul, today, replaces that of Sunday. We want to contemplate the life of faith of the two Apostles, so different one from the other. We celebrated them together for it was the same Lord who called them and whom they served and witnessed. It was the same Spirit by whom they proclaimed the Lord Jesus. The same Father God who receives glory from their lives! Celebrating the same day their feast, we give thanks to God for the divers gifts He bestowed on them, complimentary and necessary gifts for the upbuilding and holiness of the Church. Celebrating together the two Apostles can serve as the prayer of the Lord for Christian unity and as a practical teaching not to consider any Christian perfect, complete in himself.

Here and there, in the Church, there is always a priest or a bishop that falls into the temptation to do alone, or behave as all depend on him without staying in unity with the rest. Venerating Peter and Paul in one celebration serves to proclaim that the Church belongs to the Lord and not to human beings, and that each and everyone needs the other’s charisms to serve better the Kingdom of God.

The First Reading presents to us one of the several moments in the life of the disciples of the Lord Jesus, that is, it is necessary that they are rejected and persecuted, that they suffer, for He suffered before them.

Peter was put in prison, and he can only wait for his death sentence. But the decisions of men, even though they might be powerful, like Herod, are not definite, hence are never to make us afraid. The Church is praying incessantly for him, and God accepts the prayer of His Church! God’s intervention is prodigious; His angel behaves with Peter like a mother with her babe: he suggests all the moves until this one is secure and can be on his own. This text transmits us great serenity and trust for all difficult or impossible life situations.

The pain of persecution was a companion even to st. Paul. He recalls it in his letters, as we read in today’s Second Reading. When the Apostle speaks of his pains endured for the sake of the Gospel, he doesn’t do it to complain, but to praise God’s goodness who saved him and used those same difficult situations so that the Gospel can be spread everywhere, even where powerful men reign. "The Lord was near me and gave me power", "The Lord shall free me from all evil and shall save for his eternal reign, to Him the glory for ever and ever"! The sufferings of the two Apostles was the way that brought them to the point of offering their lives for the Kingdom of God and to give credible witness of Jesus!

For both of them, and for the disciples of all times and places likewise, the Lord Jesus is the center, the point of departure and of arrival. The Gospel text presents us with the profession of faith of Peter, that firmly proclaimes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God! We know that he himself struggled hard in his faithfulness to the Lord, but once he was confirmed, he declared his love for Jesus and offered himself to serve "the sheep" whom Jesus trusted him with. Jesus had promised to Peter "the keys of the reign of heaven", a very important and definite ministry, a ministry for the Church "against which the powers of hell shall not prevail"!

For this reason, today, we spiritually unite ourselves with the successor of Peter, who bears the responsibility (for himself) and the grace (for us) of those keys that open to us the door of the eternal joys and close the door to those who want to disperd and ruin. Together with him we pray that God’s Reign reaches every people through the preaching of the Gospel, and that those who preach in the name of Jesus can have the power and the courage of Paul in bringing forward this ministry. Paul established churches everywhere, so that everywhere can the name of the Lord be invoked! Who, like him, is "captured by Jesus", cannot not make Him known and loved for in the knowledge and love is salvation, life, peace, joy, and the unity of the peoples and the whole world.