Cleaving Souls

Peter and Paul. Oil and water. The keys that bind versus the sword of liberation. The importance of tradition versus a Gospel that calls us above and beyond the past. The old man set in his ways versus the mercurial, young man who is all things to all people. The cautious man who loses his nerve versus the bold, go-for-broke gambler. The bartering fisherman who demands his pay versus the theology student who follows God without counting the cost. The immovable Chair of St. Peter attempting to claim the world for itself versus the restless Apostle on horseback or in boats or trekking across continents seeking to bring Christ to the world. The man who sought safety versus the explorer always peeling off surfaces, encountering, discovering, finding in the endless process of conversion to Christ.

In the El Greco painting accompanying this reflection, Peter is depicted in undyed cloth bespeaking orthodox Judaism while the brightly arrayed Paul reflects the vibrant Gentile life beyond. Peter frowns looking down and away from Paul. Paul's eyes are set on a distant land. They embrace, yet they do not embrace. They need each other, yet they reject each others ministries and beliefs.

For Peter, Paul had been a double-threat. First, he had attacked 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 the followers of Jesus. Many scholars believe that Saul/Paul actually held the tunics and cloaks of the men who killed St. Stephen, the Proto-martyr.

Then, Paul had 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 need not apply, that Jewish religious observances were superfluous. Think of what this meant to men like Peter and the Lord's step-brother, James the Just. They were deeply conservative, men who continued to live and minister in Jerusalem, the cultic center of the old religion, where observance defined one's life. And they would have worshipped in the Temple.

Set against this background, Paul enjoined the Jerusalem Church to convoke the proto-Ecumenical Council of the Church, the Council of Jerusalem (48 A.D.). On the agenda was nothing less than the repeal of the Mosaic Law, or at least parts of it. Who could conceive of anything more radical than this? Is 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

These powerful, opposing forces were personified by the orthodox Peter on one side and the innovating Paul on the other. Considering their backgrounds, their formations, their personalities, and their areas of ministry, this comes as no surprise. Saul 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 on the street. Simon bar Jonah was a rough-cut fisherman working the nets and docks. In comparison to Saul, Peter would have seemed uneducated.

Taken together, they summed up the world that the young Church sought to win. They refrained from demonizing each other. They refrained from attacking each others 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 ... no matter who God's messenger might be. And perhaps in this, we learn a great lesson sent to us in our time from Heaven: in large measure the "medium is the message" (to borrow Marshall McLuhan's phrase): seeking an eirenic way ahead, looking for harmony, remembering the imperative of hospitality no matter who the guest might be. In our era of unremitting conflict, rancor, and personal attack the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul should stand out as a beacon for us, as a guiding light calling us always to Christian life and good cheer however much our enemies may redouble their efforts.

Ours has become culture of tribalism, where men and women lose their jobs, families are shunned in the public square, and children are humiliated because they were are "on the wrong 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. Nonetheless, his phone would still ring in mid-morning, and he would hear a familiar voice: "Tip, it's Ronnie. Let's push back the schedule and have lunch today." And the Speaker of the House and the President of the United States would tell stories, share a libation, laugh, and remember .... and perhaps iron out wrinkles through a little "horse trading." Why did they do this? Can you imagine Nancy Pelosi sharing a cordial lunch with President Donald Trump today? Why did these two old men do this? Because they were formed in a world that has nearly vanished: the Age of Decency. I can still recall the imperatives urged upon me by my grandparents: "Stephen, it is possible to disagree without becoming disagreeable."

I nominate as the patron saints of the present era St. Peter and his "arch-enemy" St. Paul. We could do worse than to have the intercession of their prayers: prayers that we be patient, prayers for mutual respect, prayers that we care for, and about, one another. Had they not followed this course, the young Church founded by the Son of God might have been destroyed .... all because they had differing visions for its identity and purposes. But they held back. They did not vilify each other, much less their families.

The Church and the world has always been a place for disagreement and dissent. And when such disagreement escalates into mania and rage, we ought to be guided by the Archbishop [Macro Antonio de Dominis] of an aptly named Archdiocese called "Split," in a region of the world synonymous with division, the Balkans, where people are balkanized or divided. The Archbishop bequeathed to us words we can 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 two great souls, 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. Unity.

May I borrow from the St. Paul's letter to the Church at Ephesus? The One Catholic and Apostolic Church, we know, is an outline traced upon the earth, the outline of a Person Who is called both the Son of God and the Son of Man. His Body is made of many parts, as it is filled out by the holy lives of its Bodily 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 Henri Cardinal de Lubac's imperative: "the Catholic spirit is both-and, not either-or." And I remind my fellow Orthodox clerics, religious, and faithful members that our Church's name is the Orthodox Catholic Church. We are not Orthodox versus Catholic. We are Catholic and have been since the Lord called His Disciples ... or, perhaps more accurately, since the Lord God made Adam and Eve.

In this stewardship of the Body on earth lies a grave responsibility. The Body of Christ can be injured, made ill, even fatally ill, if its cells should become cancerous. For each cell of the Body has the power to fill the other cells around it either with grave contagion or with wholesomeness and health. We know from the lessons of daily life that the cells around us can either lift us up or drag us down. Unredeemed cells, spreading their cancer, have power to infect us .... and the entire Church. The Lord Jesus founded the Church with a process we call Reconciliation, a kind of re-baptism in which we regret, we repent, and we are absolved leading to healing (Jn 20:23). But if healing fail, surgery must be applied and cancerous cells removed. As the Lord Jesus has commanded

The Apostle Paul taught that the Body of Christ, in order to grow to full stature in a broken world, must be healthy, made up of wholesome cells that uplift one another, taking good nutrition, not with perverted cells that compulsively feed on poison. All are welcome to enter this Body and receive nutrition and be healed and, in the end, to have eternal life. But no cell has the right to demand a new kind of anatomy or to redefine what good might mean. This insistence on one's own truth, on one's own rules, on one's own "moral theology" is the root cause for our loss of Eden, which we may call the original Church.

As the Archbishop of Split has written, some things cannot change. So what are they? They are heresy, depravity, immorality. Compassion shown toward people who propose such changes is no compassion at all, for it condemns the one who espouses it, and it endangers the many, many faithful who depend upon the bishops to defend the faith.

Today, we celebrate two lives who were not perfect. St. Peter betrayed the Lord on three different occasions, with each offense worse than the last. First, he betrayed the condemned Christ in the High Priest's courtyard three times before the cock crowed. Peter betrayed the Risen Christ refusing to requite his love in the famous exchange at John 21. Three times Jesus demanded, using the verb form of agape, or sacrificial love, and three times Peter declined with the much weaker philia, or dutifulness. Finally, He betrayed the Ascended Christ. Encountering Jesus outside of Rome Who was heading to the very flock Peter had just abandoned, he asked the Son of God, "Quo vadis, Domine?" ("Where are you going, Lord?") "I am going, Peter, to be crucified a second time," Jesus replied.

St. Paul persecuted the young Church mercilessly hoping to exterminate the saints and perhaps participated in the murder of the Proto-martyr, St. Stephen. These men were far from being perfect, but they shared certain crucial qualities. They could be humbled. They could be taught. They could repent of their excesses. They loved God, which means to love His Church. And they followed God's Son, not pouring out hatred and invective on those who hated them, but laying down their lives, remembering the words of our Lord, when He said, "No one hath greater love than this."

God has need of each of us though we are far from being 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 depends on most here in this when shadows are falling.

We must listen. We must obey. We must set aside petty problems and differences. We must repent of our sins that we may be all that we possibly can be for His holy purposes. In a cosmic battle between good and evil, you do not know but that your life might be the one that tips the balance.

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