POPE FRANCIS ON PETER AND PAUL

The Holy Father’s Full Homily

The Apostles Peter and Paul stand before us as witnesses. They never tired of preaching and journeying as missionaries from the land of Jesus to Rome itself. Here they gave their ultimate witness, offering their lives as martyrs. If we go to the heart of that testimony, we can see them as witnesses to life, witnesses to forgiveness and witnesses to Jesus.

Witnesses to life. Their lives, though, were not neat and linear. Both were deeply religious: Peter was one of the very first disciples (cf. Jn 1:41), and Paul was “zealous for the traditions of [his] ancestors” (Gal 1:14). Yet they also made great mistakes: Peter denied the Lord, while Paul persecuted the Church of God. Both were cut to the core by questions asked by Jesus: “Simon son of John, do you love me?” (Jn 21:15); “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). Peter was grieved by Jesus’ questions, while Paul was blinded by his words. Jesus called them by name and changed their lives. After all that happened, he put his trust in them, in one who denied him and one who persecuted his followers, in two repentant sinners. We may wonder why the Lord chose not to give us two witnesses of utter integrity, with clean records and impeccable lives? Why Peter, when there was John? Why Paul, and not Barnabas?

There is a great teaching here: the starting point of the Christian life is not our worthiness; in fact, the Lord was able to accomplish little with those who thought they were good and decent. Whenever we consider ourselves smarter or better than others, that is the beginning of the end. The Lord does not work miracles with those who consider themselves righteous, but with those who know themselves needy. He is not attracted by our goodness; that is not why he loves us. He loves us just as we are; he is looking for people who are not self-sufficient, but ready to open their hearts to him. People who, like Peter and Paul, are transparent before God. Peter immediately told Jesus: “I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). Paul wrote that he was “least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle” (1 Cor 15:9). Throughout life, they preserved this humility, to the very end. Peter died crucified upside down since he did not consider himself worthy to imitate his Lord. Paul was always fond of his name, which means “little”, and left behind his birth name, Saul, the name of the first king of his people. Both understood that holiness does not consist in exalting but rather in humbling oneself. Holiness is not a contest, but a question of entrusting our own poverty each day to the Lord, who does great things for those who are lowly. What was the secret that made them persevere amid weakness? It was the Lord’s forgiveness.

Let us think about them too as witnesses to forgiveness. In their failings, they encountered the powerful mercy of the Lord, who gave them rebirth. In his forgiveness, they encountered irrepressible peace and joy. Thinking back to their failures, they might have experienced feelings of guilt. How many times might Peter have thought back to his denial! How many scruples might Paul have felt at having hurt so many innocent people! Humanly, they had failed. Yet they encountered a love greater than their failures, a forgiveness strong enough to heal even their feelings of guilt. Only when we experience God’s forgiveness do we truly experience rebirth. From there we start over, from forgiveness; there we rediscover who we really are: in the confession of our sins.

Witnesses to life and witnesses to forgiveness, Peter and Paul are ultimately witnesses to Jesus. In today’s Gospel, the Lord asks: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The answers evoke figures of the past: “John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets”. Remarkable people, but all of them dead. Peter instead replies: “You are the Christ” (Mt 16:13-14.16). The Christ, that is, the Messiah. A word that points not to the past, but to the future: the Messiah is the one who is awaited, he is newness, the one who brings God’s anointing to the world. Jesus is not the past, but the present and the future. He is not a distant personage to be remembered, but the one to whom Peter can speak intimately: You are the Christ. For those who are his witnesses, Jesus is more than a historical personage; he is a living person: he is newness, not things we have already seen, the newness of the future and not a memory from the past. The witness, then, is not someone who knows the story of Jesus, but someone who has experienced a love story with Jesus. The witness, in the end, proclaims only this: that Jesus is alive and that he is the secret of life. Indeed, Peter, after saying: “You are the Christ”, then goes on to say: “the Son of the living God” (v. 16). Witness arises from an encounter with the living Jesus. At the center of Paul’s life too, we find that same word that rises up from Peter’s heart: Christ. Paul repeats this name constantly, almost four hundred times in his letters! For him, Christ is not only a model, an example, a point of reference: he is life itself. Paul writes: “For me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21). Jesus is Paul’s present and his future, so much so that he considers the past as refuse in comparison to the surpassing knowledge of Christ (cf. Phil 3:7-8).

Brothers and sisters, in the presence of these witnesses, let us ask: “Do I renew daily my own encounter with Jesus?” We may be curious about Jesus, or interested in Church matters or religious news. We may open computer sites and the papers, and talk about holy things. But this is to remain at the level of what are people saying? Jesus does not care about polls, past history or statistics. He is not looking for religion editors, much less “front page” or “statistical” Christians. He is looking for witnesses who say to him each day: “Lord, you are my life”.

Having met Jesus and experienced his forgiveness, the Apostles bore witness to him by living a new life: they no longer held back but gave themselves over completely. They were no longer content with half-measures but embraced the only measure possible for those who follow Jesus: that of boundless love. They were “poured out as a libation” (cf. 2 Tim 4:6). Let us ask for the grace not to be lukewarm Christians living by half measures, allowing our love to grow cold. Let us rediscover who we truly are through a daily relationship with Jesus and through the power of his forgiveness. Just as he asked Peter, Jesus is now asking us: “Who do you say that I am?”, “Do you love me?” Let us allow these words to penetrate our hearts and inspire us not to remain content with a minimum, but to aim for the heights so that we too can become living witnesses to Jesus.

Today we bless the pallia for the Metropolitan Archbishops named in the past year. The pallium recalls the sheep that the shepherd is called to bear on his shoulders. It is a sign that the shepherds do not live for themselves but for the sheep. It is a sign that, in order to possess life, we have to lose it, give it away. Today our joy is shared, in accordance with a fine tradition, by a Delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, whose members I greet with affection. Your presence, dear brothers, reminds us that we can spare no effort also in the journey towards full unity among believers, in communion at every level. For together, reconciled to God and having forgiven one another, we are called to bear witness to Jesus by our lives.

© Libreria Editrice Vatican

JUNE 29, 2019 16:30ROME

PRAYER, THE NATURE OF

THE NATURE OF PRAYER

Prayer is the language of friendship with God. Prayer sustains a life of friendship with God, a friendship that God took the initiative to start. It has the pedagogical and transformative aspects of all spiritual practices. They help situate daily life in the horizon of God’s friendship. Spiritual practices should not degenerate into mere technique. Friends enjoy regularly conversing with each other because that is the lifeblood of the friendship. The practices of Christian prayer have their own integrity; they are not means to personal growth or strategies to trigger peak experiences. As disciples of Jesus we are expect to admire and revere him. But Jesus desires more than that: “I call you not my servants, but my friends.” The servant-master relationship has little room for the intimacy of friends. Jesus treats them as friends by disclosing who he is and where he is going. Knowing Jesus is mysterious, but that knowledge grows through intimate conversation that is the basic medium of friendship.

We start to pray not in a vacuum but in community through forms and rituals that have been shaped over time. The Lord’s Prayer shows that we are introduced into God’s family, and it contains the basic modes of all private and communal prayer: praise, thanksgiving, intercession, repentance.

As with the initial stages of friendship, people begin to pray for a variety of reasons, some of which are probably self-interested. Typically we begin to pray for what we want, then we are gradually led to seek what we need, namely, a deeper and unconditional relation with God where we let God be the judge of what we should receive. Prayer may begin as a technique, but under the impetus of the Spirit it becomes a practice, a virtue, sheer joy. A regular discipline of prayer has its own dynamic and rhythm that should shift attention from self-concern to the Other. It moves toward whole-hearted attention to God who is revealed through Christ. Prayer becomes an activity that is done for its own sake, just as friends want to be in each other’s company simply because it is good.

At the same time, friends are bound by common interests beyond themselves. Their common cause, whether sports or justice or the environment, enriches the bond of friendship and draws the best from them. Christian prayer pulls Christians beyond themselves to active devotion to God’s cause in the world. It longs for God to reign in the whole of creation, for a deeper impact of God’s liberating and healing Spirit. Intercession for the world naturally leads to service in the world.

Prayer is not an aid, a technique or means. Rather, prayer is part of having a life formed in joy, gratitude, awe and compassion. These gifts are directed towards God and all God’s creation.

Even prayers of intercession are not pragmatic strategies but they are exercises in locating our concerns in the concern of God and opening ourselves to finding God’s way of responding, which quite often does not match our requests.

 Although we do not pray in order to become reverent, humble, grateful, caring, and hopeful, these virtues are formed in paying whole-hearted attention to God and seeing the world through the perspective defined by God’s word.

The Gospel tells us that the intercessory prayer locates all the events of life and all the happenings of our time within the space of God’s reign. Nothing great or small falls outside the compassion of “the One in whom we live and move and have our being.” Intercessory prayer helps us perceive traces of the dawn of God’s reign. It brings what we need into the scope of what God wants, relating all things to the friendship that God has for us.

REORGANISING OUR LIVES

                    REORGANISING OUR LIVES

It is a shocking reality that the greatest cause of death in young people under 25 in the developed world is not the abuse of drugs or alcohol or misadventure, but suicide. Young adults living in the countries with the highest standards of living and with the greatest educational opportunities, in theory, should have the most to live for. Yet, in a generation that is sometimes described as the most socially connected ever, the feeling of isolation appears like a pandemic. Many contemporary young people are not OK. The reasons for this poor state of mental health, the increase in suicide (or “self-delivery”, as suicide is now sometimes called) and attempted suicide, are many and complex.

Happiness has become an industry that is selling all of us a lie. I don’t mind people being happy – but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease which is fear of sadness. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. I’d like to take the word ‘happiness’ and to replace it with the word ‘wholeness’.

Parents tell me: “I don’t care what my kids do, as long as they’re happy.” Although it may be just a casual throwaway line, it is a symptom of a deeper anxiety. Why are we setting our children up for such failure? Why don’t Christian parents say: “I want my children to be faithful, hopeful, loving, honest and good?” Living those virtues will not always lead to happiness – but it will bring something more valuable and precious. Joy. Joy is one the great themes in the teaching of Pope Francis. Christian joy is not the same as happiness. Christian joy celebrates that we know where we have come from, why we are here and where we are going.                                                                                            

It is not looking for the easy side of life, but rather confronting the inevitable tough moments in our lives, and embracing suffering as an inescapable reality of the human condition. It seeks to be resilient in the face of adversity by embodying Jesus’ call to love God and our neighbour as we love ourselves. And it tells us that we are not meant to live isolated lives like “rocks and islands”, as the Simon and Garfunkel song has it. There was a good reason why Jesus sent the disciples out in twos. Living Christian joy is not easy or straightforward. But setting out on this path might be the way to be more than OK. So let’s help reorganise our lives not around happiness but the Joy of Christian Life.                                                                                                                      

 Periods of sadness, depression and doubts can enter the life of even the most devout Christian. We see many examples of this in the Bible. Job wished he had never been born (Job 3:11). David prayed to be taken away to a place where he would not have to deal with reality (Psalm 55:6-8). Elijah, even after defeating 450 prophets of Baal with fire called down from heaven (1 Kings 18:16-46), fled into the desert and asked God to take his life (1 Kings 19:3-5).

             

So how can we overcome these periods of joylessness? We can see how these same people overcame their bouts of depression. Job said that, if we pray and remember our blessings, God will restore us to joy and righteousness (Job 33:26). David wrote that the study of God's Word can bring us joy (Psalm 19:8). David also realized that he needed to praise God even in the midst of despair (Psalm 42:5).

                                                                             

                                                                                        

In Elijah's case,                                               

God let him rest for a time and then sent a man, Elisha, to help him (1 Kings 19:19-21).

We also need friends that we can share our hurts and pains with (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12). It is helpful to share our feelings with a fellow Christian. We may be surprised to find that he or she has struggled with some of the same things that we are going through.

Most importantly, it is certain that dwelling on ourselves, our problems, our hurts, and especially our pasts will never produce true spiritual joy. Joy is not found in materialism, it is not found in psychotherapy, and it most certainly is not found in obsession with ourselves. It is found in Jesus. We belong to the Lord and we “glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in our flesh” (Philippians 3:3). To know Christ is to come to have a true sense of ourselves, and true spiritual insight, making it impossible to glory in ourselves, in our wisdom, strength, riches, or goodness, but in Jesus—in His wisdom and strength, in His riches and goodness, and in His person only. If we remain in Him, immerse ourselves in His Word, and seek to know Him more intimately, our “joy will be full” (John 15:1-11).

Indeed, the harder we try to be joyful through our own efforts, the more miserable we can become. Rest in the Lord's arms (Matthew 11:28-30) and seek His face through prayer and the Bible. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

                                                                                                                                                                             

Blessed John Henry Newman always insisted that the Christian vocation was one of light and joy. “Gloom is no Christian

temper; repentance is not real which has no love in it; penance is not acceptable which is not sweetened by                                                       

faith and cheerfulness. We must live in sunshine, even when we sorrow; we must live in God’s presence; we must not shut ourselves up in our own hearts, even when we are looking up our past sins.” “Left to itself, human nature tends to death and utter apostasy from God.

Character cannot be developed in ease and comfort.  Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.  You gain strength, experience, and confidence by every experience where you really look at fear in the face.  You must do the thing you cannot do.  And remember, the finest steel gets sent through the hottest furnace.  A REAL WINNER is not one who never fails, but one who NEVER QUITS!  In life, remember that you pass this way only once!  Let's live life to the fullest and give it our best.

 What’s our ultimate point of growth? I suspect that we tend to think of this in terms of some concrete, positive accomplishment, like a successful career or some athletic, intellectual or artistic achievement that’s brought us satisfaction, recognition and popularity. Or we might answer the question differently by saying that our ultimate achievement was a life-giving marriage, or being a good parent, or living a life that served others.

                                                                           Henri Nouwen suggests that people will answer this very differently: “For some, it is when they are enjoying the full light of popularity; for others, when they have been totally forgotten; for some, when they have reached the peak of their strength; for others, when they feel powerless and weak; for                                                                            

some, it is when their creativity is in full bloom; for others, when they have lost all confidence in their potential.”

For Jesus, it wasn’t immediately after his miracles when the crowds stood in awe, and it wasn’t after he had just walked on water, and it wasn’t when his popularity reached the point where the people wanted to make him king, that he felt he had accomplished his purpose in life and that people had begun to be touched in their souls by his spirit. No, not all that.

When did Jesus have nothing further to achieve?               When he was nailed to the cross, robbed of all human dignity, he knew that he had matured enough, and said: ‘It is fulfilled’ (John 19:30).

 On the Cross, faithful to the end, to his God, to his word, to the love he preached and to his own integrity, he stopped living and began dying. That was when his spirit began to permeate the world. He had reached his deepest centre. His life was fulfilled.

It is important that the first thing we do when we open our eyes is to be grateful and to acknowledge our purpose so that we may align our motivations and our actions with God’s will. And when we do that, we are able to structure the day ahead in a positive and meaningful way. Evidence from psychology research suggests that positive emotions such as joy, gratitude, and interest, lead to a positive tone that tends to be long-lasting; and so why not start the day with positivity? Why not start the day inviting Jesus into our lives? Making time in the morning to pray gives us not only to get a head start on our day but also the opportunity to reflect on God’s calling in our lives, our purpose. We get to discern what God’s will is for us that day. The better we are aligned with God’s will, the clearer our pursuits in life will be.  “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). 

  

                                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       The Gospel of Mark tells us that our Lord Jesus got up very early in the morning, while it was still dark, to go off to a lonely place to pray (Mark 1:35). That time of prayer was followed by a very productive day when he went preaching throughout Galilee, casting out demons, and healing the sick. Jesus shows us that no matter how long, busy, and tiresome our day will be, it is important that our daily activities start off with prayer, even if it means waking up very early.

So, let’s look into our lives and reorganise!