The ‘rough-hewn’ St Peter and the ‘erudite’ St Paul

SAINTS PETER AND PAUL 29 JUNE 2025

The recent conclave and election of a new Pope drew the world’s attention to the papacy, the oldest, continuously existing, “as well as arguably the most influential” (Eamon Duffy) of all historical institutions. Today’s conjoined feast of the two apostles, Peter and Paul, one an unlettered fisherman, the other a well-educated Roman citizen, is a reminder of the papacy’s origins and the Roman See’s momentous impact on the history of the world and human society. Rome’s importance arises not from its ancient imperial significance, but from the fact that it is where both St Peter, the chief apostle, and St Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, were martyred and where their remains have rested and been revered ever since.

Presided over by its bishop, the Pope, Rome is the centre of the Church’s visible unity and the guarantee of both its identity as and continuity with the historic community originating with the apostles, who knew and were chosen by Jesus himself. However, as was clearly grasped by the English martyrs, St Thomas More and St John Fisher, the papacy matters more than any individual pope because, as an ancient dictum has it, Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia: ‘Where Peter is, there the Church is.’ It is, of course, a blessing and a boon if Peter’s successor is educated, cultured, theologically literate and, especially in the modern world, a skilled communicator. But it’s worth remembering that Peter, the first pope, was none of these things. On the contrary, this rough-hewn fisherman from an unimportant province in an obscure corner of a vast, far-flung world empire is described in the Acts of the Apostles as “unlearned and ignorant”. (Acts 4:13)

St Paul, on the other hand, was an erudite, literate Greek-speaking Pharisee, hailing from Tarsus, a well-governed, prosperous and sophisticated city of the empire. He was expert in the Jewish Law and acutely conscious of 2 his status as a Roman citizen. The contrast between Peter and Paul could not have been greater. But what they had in common was, first, that they would both make the ultimate sacrifice; secondly, that they had both, at different times and for different reasons, one through conviction, the other through cowardice, at one time set their face against the Lord for love of whom they would by martyred.

The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), once commented in his characteristically confrontational way, that there are only two possible reactions to Jesus: you are either scandalised, or you become a devoted disciple. Paul experienced both. To begin with, he was convinced that the claims made for Christ were blasphemous and offensive to pious Jewish ears; he thus felt fully justified in doing all in his power to extirpate this impious, heretical movement. Until, that is, God made the scales to fall from his eyes, and reversed the direction of all Paul’s extraordinary, single-minded energy. Peter, on the other hand turned away from his Lord out of cowardice. There is no more poignant moment in the whole of the New Testament than when Peter, having denied not only their friendship but even any knowledge of Jesus, meets his friend’s gaze across the room at the precise moment that, as Jesus had predicted, a cock crows, and breaks down in bitter tears of abject sorrow and shame. But that was only the worst of Peter’s lapses. The gospels are littered with examples of his weakness: he was prone to jealousy, impetuous and hasty in both judgment and action, slow to understand, tactless, and all-too-easily downcast. But his displays of raw humanity are unfailingly moving. The late Sebastian Moore (1917-2014), a monk of Downside, somewhere called it, “pope-training, Jesus-style”.

And yet, it was precisely this weak vacillating human being who, at crucial moments in the gospel narrative, even and especially when everything Jesus was doing was being called into question, who unreservedly asserted his undying love and loyalty. It was he alone, for instance, who impulsively clambered out of the boat on the Sea of Galilee to reach out to Jesus, only to find himself sinking when, terrified, he realises his situation. Again, in today’s gospel, he speaks for all the other apostles when he says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Again, it was to him alone that Jesus addressed three times the most direct and challenging question any person can be asked: “Peter, do you love me?” The first two times Jesus uses the Christian-coined word for love, agapein, as in charity towards all. But on the third occasion, the word he uses for ‘love’ is the love of friendship, philein. (John 21:14-17)

In comparison, the apostle Paul might seem almost Olympian, but he, too, was well-acquainted with weakness. In an intimate admission, he speaks of an abiding temptation, a weakness impossible to dispel, something that plagued him, a “thorn in my flesh”, over which he prayed constantly. God’s reply, he tells us, was unequivocal: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” “So”, Paul declares, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2 Cor 12:9) Again, he speaks with uncomfortable candour about the difficulty he experienced, as we all do, of getting himself to do what he knew he should do and not doing what he knew he shouldn’t. “For I do not do the good I want, but rather the evil I do not want to do”, he says. (Romans 7:9)

From one from one point of view, then, Peter and Paul are two very different human beings. Yet for all their differences, what they shared was their close familiarity with our weakened, frail, fallen human nature and their passionate, single-minded love for Christ. The co-existence of these characteristics is instructive. It reminds us that to be a saint is not necessarily to have lived a life without blemish or to have unfailingly chosen the good. It is not about being ‘good’, in any superficially moralistic sense. Sanctity is a million miles from being sanctimonious. Indeed, sanctity is not an attribute or quality that an individual possesses; if anything, sanctity deflects attention away from a person’s own qualities and gifts. A saint is someone who does not so much possess as one who is possessed by an unwavering, life-encompassing conviction of God’s unchanging, unconditional acceptance and love for us all, whose life is liberated by the knowledge that God’s love is entirely independent of both our merits and our mistakes. Total trust in the inexpressible and ineffable goodness that is God defines and characterises a saint’s life, so that no matter what evil we may be encounter in this life, no matter what suffering and weakness we may have to endure personally, the light that illumines every detail of our lives and the whole of creation, remains dazzlingly undimmed. The ultimate truth of a saint’s life is expressed perfectly in words uttered respectively by both Paul and Peter. Paul tells us that “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ” (Romans 8:31); and when Peter is asked by Jesus, “Will you also go