Transcript

Thank you.

Is there any number of key players in the life of the early Church?

One thinks of Timothy and Titus, of Matthew, Mark, and Mary Magdalene, of Philip, James, and John.

But the two indispensable players, the two without whom the Christian movement never would have emerged and survived, were Peter and Paul.

Why these two?

Well, Peter was the head of the Twelve, the one chosen by Jesus Himself to be the leader of the New Israel.

He was the unwavering witness to the Resurrection; he was the Rock.

And Paul?

Paul was the first great Christian theologian, the first one who saw the full implications of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and therefore allowed Christianity to emerge as a worldwide phenomenon.

These two were so central that they remain not merely of historical interest, but they endure as determining archetypes in the life of the Church to the present day.

Each Catholic bishop in the world is required every five years to make what is called an Ad Limina visit to Rome.

In the course of that pilgrimage, the bishops do indeed visit with the Pope, but their primary purpose is to pray at the tombs of the two great apostles, Peter and Paul, and to draw strength from them.

The Church has intuited that those two saints remain, 2000 years after their deaths, the crucial figures.

So the Twelve Apostles, who were meant to be the Twelve Tribes of Israel, their job was to gather the world.

They understood that, and if Jesus was the Lord of Israel, He was the Lord of the world.

So they all went out.

Peter and Paul come here; Thomas, they say, went to India.

The other apostles went all over the known world to bring this message.

And that's why the view that, Oh, Jesus just kind of inspired them with some nice spiritual ideas, makes zero sense of what they did.

Who would have bothered going to the ends of the world?

Who would have died to announce that message?

So the very fact that we're here in Rome with these teeming masses of Christians bears witness to how seriously they took this task of theirs.

He was born Shimeon bar Yohanon, Simon son of John, from that little fishing village of Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

He wasn't well educated.

He spoke his native Aramaic, probably a little Hebrew for liturgical reasons, and Greek for business reasons.

He wasn't rich, but he wasn't exactly poor.

There's evidence now that Galilean fishermen did business all over the eastern end of the Roman Empire.

One fine day, Yeshua from Nazareth came to Capernaum.

He got into Peter's boat and said, Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.

So it always goes with Jesus: when He gets into your boat, He takes you out into deep water.

Simon, the experienced fisherman, said, Lord, we've been at it all night, but if you say so, he lowered the nets, and they took in that miraculous draft of fishes.

Peter fell at the knees of Jesus and said, Lord, leave me; I'm a sinful man.

That scene captures so much of Peter's character: brash, honest, flawed.

Well, Simon did leave everything—home and livelihood—and became one of Jesus' intimate followers.

He was with Him at the major events of His life.

He was there, for instance, at the Transfiguration, when Jesus went up the high mountain, His clothes became dazzlingly white, and He began speaking to Moses and Elijah.

It was Peter who said, Lord, it's good for us to be here.

Thomas Aquinas wondered, Why was Peter there at the Transfiguration?

His answer?

Because he loved Jesus the most.

That's a clue in the spiritual life: you come to know Christ primarily by falling in love with Him the way Peter did.

He was there on that stormy night on the Sea of Galilee when Jesus came walking across the water toward the disciples.

They were terrified, but Jesus said, It is I; do not be afraid.

It was Peter who said, Lord, if it is you, call to me, and I will come to you across the sea.

And the Lord said, Come, and Peter walked on the water toward Jesus.

When he looked around at the waves, he began to sink.

That too is a lesson for the life of the Church.

As long as we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, we can walk on the stormy waters of history.

When we look away, that's when we sink.

At the climax of Jesus' life, when the dark powers were gathering around Him, Peter found himself in the courtyard of the high priest's house in the midst of a scapegoating mob.

You were with Him!

I recognize you!

I don't know Him, Peter said.

Another person said, Well, your accent gives you away.

You're a Galilean; you're one of His followers.

I tell you, I don't know Him, Peter insisted.

A third person said, Sure, I saw you with Jesus; you're one of His disciples.

Swearing, Peter said, I tell you, I do not know Him.

At that point, the cock crowed, as Jesus predicted it would: Simon, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will deny three times that you even know me.

At that point, Peter went out and wept bitterly.

After the Resurrection, Peter and the disciples returned to ply their trade on the Sea of Galilee.

While they were fishing, they spotted Jesus on the far shore.

This little detail is odd; from the Gospels, it says Peter was gimnos in Greek—he was stripped naked—and he threw on clothes and came to see the Lord.

It calls to mind a figure of Adam, who was unselfconsciously naked in the presence of the Lord before his sin, but after sin, covered himself with a loincloth.

So Peter, aware of his denial, covers himself up and comes to Jesus.

Then that beautiful conversation: Simon, do you love me?

Lord, you know I love you.

Then the Lord said, Well then, feed my sheep.

The second time, Simon, do you love me?

Lord, you know I love you.

Then feed my lambs.

Then a third time, Simon, do you love me?

Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.

Then feed my sheep.

St. Augustine's magnificent commentary was that three times he denied, and so three times he was compelled to reaffirm his love.

Also, something essential to the Christian life: our love for Jesus must always conduce toward a love for one another.

Feed my sheep; feed my lambs.

You see now what I mean when I say Peter is a determining archetype in the life of the Church.

In looking at him and his relationship to Jesus in all of its variations, all of its forms, we can see our own relationship to the Lord.

I mean, all saints are sinners—that's G.K. Chesterton's line.

That there are saints in my religion just means people that know they are sinners.

It's kind of a cool line: we're all sinners, but the saint deeply knows it because the saint is ordered to the light.

So when you're driving your car toward the light, you see more fully the marks on the windshield.

If you're driving away from the light, you say, My windshield's fine, so hey, I'm doing pretty well.

That is a pretty sure sign you're not directed toward God.

But if you are, then you say, No, no, I see all my flaws.

And the great saints, whether it's Francis or whether it's Thérèse of Lisieux or any of them, they're the first ones to say, Look, I'm the worst sinner.

But that makes perfect sense to me, yeah, because they're in the light.

That's important, I would say.

Yeah, I mean, look at St. Peter.

The minute Jesus appears to him, Peter falls to his knees and says, Lord, lead me; I'm a sinful man.

I mean, that's the first thing he says because he's right in the presence of the Light.

That's when you know it.

It doesn't mean you give up; I mean, you're well aware of your own flaws.

There's one particular event in the life of Simon upon which I'd like to focus.

We have to go back to that extraordinary conversation between Jesus and His disciples in the region of Caesarea Philippi.

I've already analyzed the peculiarity of the question that Jesus asked: Who do people say that I am?

Let me now look at some of the answers He received.

The disciples speak up: Some say Moses or Elijah; others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

Jesus, like a celebrity today, must have stirred up a great deal of popular buzz.

There must have been a lot of opinions being shared about who He was, and the disciples' answer reflects that popular consensus.

Here's what all those answers have in common: they're all wrong.

When people say the Church is not a democracy, this is what they mean: the determination of who Jesus Christ is can never simply be a matter of popular consensus.

Then Simon speaks up: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

You are the Christ; he would have said Mashiach in his Aramaic.

You're the Anointed One.

Peter knew He was the one who would gather the tribes, who would cleanse the Temple, who would rule as Lord of Israel.

But then he adds an extraordinary line.

You are the Son of the living God.

You are not just one more in a long line of prophets; you're not just one more religious seer among many.

You are the Son of God.

Jesus responds, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because no mere man has revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.

How did Simon know this?

It wasn't because of his native intelligence; it wasn't because of his splendid education—he didn't have one.

It wasn't because he was specially skilled at assessing the consensus of the people.

It came as a special charism of the Holy Spirit; it came as a gift from God.

And then Jesus adds, I will call you Kephas.

That's in Aramaic; it means the Rock.

Rocky, rendered in Greek as Petros, Latin Petrus, and English Peter.

And upon this rock, I will build my Church.

I will give to you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Church rests upon this confession of Peter; it rests upon this charismatically given knowledge of who Jesus is.

And mind you, Jesus speaks here in the future: I will build my Church upon this foundation; the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

He can't just be speaking of Peter personally, but of all those who down the ages would share in his charism, would share in his office.

One of the most consistent claims of the New Testament is that Peter was the definitive witness to the risen Jesus.

Again and again, we hear, The Lord is risen, and He has appeared to Simon.

After Pentecost, the often wavering apostle became a tower of strength and resolve, and his proclamation centered consistently around the Resurrection.

His speech in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost is a masterpiece of persuasive evangelism and probably typical of his preaching.

You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power.

This man was handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God; you crucified Him, but God raised Him up.

Therefore, let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah.

So powerful was this speech that the audience, Luke tells us, was cut to the heart.

The successors of Peter have always had the fundamental task of witnessing in just this way to the Resurrection of Jesus.

Peter came here to Rome in the late 50s or early 60s of the first century.

Why did he come here?

Well, he knew that Jesus was the King of the Jews, and that meant, by extension, the Lord of all the nations.

So, of course, he came here to this center of world empire.

He probably settled in this neighborhood of Trastevere behind me.

In the first century, it was the Jewish quarter.

Peter proclaimed Jesus risen from the dead.

Tradition says that St. Mark, the first evangelist, was Peter's companion and translator.

Many say that the content and rhythm of Peter's preaching can be seen in the Gospel of Mark.

Peter died around 65 or 66 as the most prominent victim of Nero's persecution of the early Church.

He was crucified just a few hundred yards from where I'm standing, in between the Janiculum and Vatican Hills, outside the city walls.

In those days, he was crucified most likely in the Circus of Nero, along the spina—they called it—along the spine of that circus.

There stood a great obelisk that Augustus had brought back from Egypt.

If Peter was crucified there, it's probably one of the last things that he saw.

It's currently standing right in the center of St. Peter's Square.

After Peter's death, they cut down his body and buried him in a little cemetery up on the Vatican Hills.

In the 4th century, the first Christian emperor, Constantine, built a great basilica on the site that lasted for many centuries, until the end of the 15th century, when it was torn down and the present great basilica of St. Peter's was erected.

In the middle of the 20th century, Pope Pius XII gave permission for excavations underneath St. Peter's. They discovered that first-century cemetery, and they found in one block of stone a fascinating bit of graffiti.

It said, Petros Aeneas—Peter is within.

When they opened up that grave, they found the bones of a man between the ages of 60 and 70, a man sturdily built.

Here’s what I want you to see: Christianity is not a philosophy; it's not an abstract set of convictions.

Christianity is based upon a person—this Yeshua of Nazareth, who is the friend of Simon Peter.

If you look in the First Letter of John, you find this line: We proclaim to you the Word of Life.

Sounds abstract enough, but then he goes on, which we have seen with our eyes and which our hands have touched.

Now that's the foundation of Christianity—the Word of Life that people like Simon Peter knew.

Simon Peter saw Him with his eyes and touched Him with his hands.

That is the personal foundation upon which Christianity rests.

It's all kind of ironic and edgy to take that obelisk that was right around here, right in the center of Nero's Circus, and it was Rome's way of saying, Hey, we are triumphant!

We conquered Egypt; we took their obelisk, and now this is ours.

And now we put it up there and say, Well, you didn't win.

I know you crucified Peter, but look, here's Peter's Church, and there's Peter's successor living right up there, and that's the obelisk he saw.

So it's all meant to be kind of a gentle in-your-face.

I do revel in that when I come here.

The second of the indispensable players in the early Church was Paul, born Shaul (Saul) in the town of Tarsus in the southeast quadrant of Asia Minor around the year 10, making him a younger contemporary of Jesus.

A child of diaspora Jews, Saul was born into a mixed culture—Jewish and Greek—and he became, at some point in his early life, a Roman citizen.

Therefore, he combined in his person the three great cultures of his time and place, and this made him, when the propitious moment arrived, particularly apt as a bearer of the message of the God of Israel to the wider world.

Young Saul probably received a fairly decent classical education, reading Plato, Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Homer.

But Saul's most significant intellectual formation came through his immersion in the world of the Hebrew Scriptures, which began when he was very young and intensified when he was sent, probably as a teenager, to Jerusalem in order to study at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the leading rabbis of the time.

In Jerusalem with Gamaliel, Saul searched out the Scriptures and participated in the liturgies and rituals of the Temple.

Though Gamaliel was known to be relatively broad-minded in his reading of classical Judaism, Saul moved in the opposite direction, becoming, as he would later put it, zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.

As he moved into his twenties, what bothered this young Jewish zealot most was the emerging Christian movement.

And indeed, how could it not?

The claim that a crucified carpenter was the Messiah of Israel ran counter to all the expectations of pious Jews.

Thus, Saul set out with fanatic passion to persecute the early Christian community, which he undoubtedly saw as a group of renegade and unfaithful Jews.

There is a chilling passage in the Acts of the Apostles that describes Saul as breathing murderous threats against Christians and entering their homes to drag them away in chains to prison.

The very first reference to Saul in the New Testament is in connection with the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

As a stone-throwing mob is putting Stephen to death, Saul is pictured as looking on with approval.

We don't realize how dangerous the message of Jesus was and how dangerous His person was—what a threat it was to the status quo.

It still is, of course.

It's the domesticated Christ who's not a problem, which is why that's a permanent temptation: to domesticate Him, to make Him kind of a nice, harmless spiritual figure.

But He remains permanently disruptive, and the first Christians certainly knew that; they bore the brunt of it.

They knew it, so I'm convinced they all knew they were going to meet martyr's deaths.

Saul received permission from his superiors to go as far as Damascus to root out the Christians and to bring them back in chains.

On the way there, something happened to Saul that changed not only him but changed the world.

Here’s Saul's own language: he spoke of a light and the hearing of a voice that said, Shaul, Shaul, why are you persecuting me?

And when he said, Who are you, Lord?

the voice answered, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

Get up and go into the city, and you'll be told what to do.

I'm standing here in the great Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, in front of Caravaggio's great masterpiece, The Conversion of St. Paul.

It's his depiction of the scene I've been describing.

Look how young Saul is!

Often we don't think of St. Paul as anything but a bald-headed, long-bearded old man, but at this time, the time of the conversion, he would have been in his mid-twenties, maybe late-twenties.

If you see him there, look how Caravaggio has captured all of that fanatical energy and passion.

He's in that armor; he's got that helmet with the plume that has fallen from his head.

Look at the sword to the side; look at that Roman-style red cape.

There’s somebody who is fanatical, armed, and dangerous as he's going off to Damascus.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

And then the light, which blinds him.

Look at his eyes as he gestures helplessly upward.

There’s Saul disempowered, Saul in his weakness.

And then this, to me, wonderful Caravaggio touch: how odd that in this depiction of Paul's conversion, the horse seems to be the dominant player.

See how the horse just dominates the composition.

And now look at the eye of the horse as he looks back at the scene.

Saul doesn't know what's happening to him, but can you catch it?

The horse does.

The horse seems to know what’s happening.

Here’s what I love about this: Saul, in his armor and his cape and his helmet and his sword, full of fanatical passion, galloping off to Damascus, is knocked to the ground by grace.

But see, when he will look one day with humble eyes at this scene, then he will know; then he will understand what happened to Saul.

Now, Paul, after the conversion?

We hear that he went to Damascus, he was baptized by Ananias, one of the disciples, and then he says he went to Arabia, then back to Damascus.

Only three years later did he return to Jerusalem to talk with the disciples.

What was going on?

What was he doing during these years?

I can't help but think he was trying to figure out what the heck had happened to him.

Here’s someone who knew the Law; he knew Israel; he knew what this was all about.

He was galloping off to pursue the Church in full confidence, and then he met the crucified and risen Jesus, and he knew he had to reconfigure everything.

We speak of Paul's conversion, but that can give the wrong impression, as though he was moving from one religion to another.

No, no, he was trying to understand how everything he knew about Israel now had to be reassessed and rethought in light of the crucified and risen Jesus.

Once he figured that out, it took about three years, then he was ready to preach.

Yes, like other biblical figures before him, Saul signaled his new identity by changing his name; Shaul became Paul.

Paul realized that his mission was to declare to everybody, Jew and Gentile alike, that they had a new King.

Through the power of the Resurrection, Jesus was revealed as the fulfillment of all of God's promises to Israel and therefore as the light to all the nations.

Paul felt personally commissioned by Christ to be the bearer of that message to the world.

The second half of the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of Paul scurrying furiously around the Mediterranean world, telling anyone he could that Jesus was the Lord.

When you read those breathless pages, you're struck by the boundless energy and unremitting focus of the man.

On his first missionary journey, Paul set out from Antioch in Syria and sailed to Cyprus.

He preached his way from one end of that island to the other.

Next, he sailed to Asia Minor and commenced to preach in established churches in Perga, Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium.

Finally, he made his way to the northwest coast of Asia Minor, where his mission took a decisive turn.

While Paul was in Troas—that's the region around Troy—he had a dream in which a man from Macedonia appeared to him and said, Come and help us.

Inspired by this, Paul made the short journey from Asia to Greece.

The Catholic cultural historian Christopher Dawson has said that even though no commentator at the time would have noticed this little journey that Paul made, in fact, it was one of the most decisive events in the last 2000 years, for it represented the arrival of Christianity in Europe and therefore the beginning of a revolution in culture that would eventually affect the whole world.

Paul's first important stop in Europe was the Roman colony of Philippi, named for Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great.

Paul would have arrived in town by the road that I'm walking on, called the Via Ignatia.

Once he was here, he preached the Gospel, established a small Christian community, and then, as was usually the case with Paul for his troubles, he ended up in prison.

That night, while he was singing hymns with his companion Silas, an earthquake struck, and the doors of the prison were thrown open.

Supposing the prisoners had escaped, the jailer drew his sword in order to impale himself, but Paul stopped him, saying, Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.

The shaken man then asked what he must do to be saved.

The simple and magnificent answer Paul gave was, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.

There, in a nutshell, is the whole Gospel that Paul preached: submit to the lordship of a new King, Christ crucified and risen.

The letter that Paul would later write back to the community of Philippi, one of the gems of the Christian tradition, provides a pithy encapsulation of his teaching.

He writes, Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.

God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

First, we notice that the divinity of Jesus is clearly affirmed; he's in the form of God and has the name above any other name.

And second, we see the consequence of this affirmation: Jesus is the Kyrios, the Lord, to whom final allegiance is due within the political and cultural sphere and indeed throughout the cosmos and the invisible order as well.

Having left Philippi, Paul came to Thessalonica and immediately went to the Jewish synagogue to proclaim the good news.

As he laid out his story, some were persuaded, but others were enraged and managed to stir up a mob, which set the city in an uproar.

Paul's message was indeed designed to turn the world upside down precisely because it was the proclamation of a new King and therefore of an entirely new way of organizing things.

If our teaching of the faith is too often tepid and uninspiring, authentic Christian proclamation is as subversive and explosive as the earthquake that shook the prison walls in Philippi.

Paul wrote to these communities which he had founded, but he didn't stay there to govern them.

He knew his job was to evangelize, to go around the world.

So he would set up a church, probably find a little local leadership, and then he'd move on.

In some cases, they would write to him, and then he would write back, answering a lot of pragmatic questions, which is why some of Paul's letters are filled with practical details.

In the midst of it, you might find some theology.

The letter to the Romans is distinctive because it's Paul's longest letter and also the most theologically complex; it's more like a treatise.

But they were indeed letters.

He would dictate them typically to a secretary, and sometimes he'd end the letter by saying, And this is written in my own hand.

In one of them, he says, See how big I write?

So it was like he was actually writing the thing at the end, but the secretary was taking it down usually.

They were real letters written to these communities, and then they were read to the congregation.

Most likely, the early churches were what they called household churches.

They'd be in someone's home, and they'd gather the small Christian community.

Then someone who could read—not everyone could, of course—would get up and read Paul's letter aloud.

I'm always moved when I think about these letters making their way through the Roman postal system.

By our standards, it's probably pretty primitive, although not bad.

That was part of the genius of the Roman road system, and the postal system was pretty good.

But a little scroll is coming into Rome.

Did anyone think that the letter arriving would change the whole world and would be written about for centuries, becoming the source of huge controversy?

Undoubtedly no.

But Paul sends his letter to the Church in Rome, probably gathering in someone's home.

The next stop on Paul's missionary journey was Athens.

He came here to the Areopagus, which was the high court of ancient Athens, the place of public debate and conversation.

The speech that Paul gave here provides the occasion for exploring the central theme of his preaching: the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Paul began by complimenting the Athenians for their religiosity, evident in the many shrines and altars that he had seen.

He drew their attention to a particular altar, one to an unknown god.

The nature of that god, unknown to the philosophers and myth-makers of Athens, would be the subject of Paul's proclamation.

The true God, he said, is the one who made the heavens and the earth in their entirety, and therefore He does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is He an image fashioned by the art and imagination of men.

Now keep in mind, Paul is saying this in the shadow of the Parthenon, which is the most impressive religious shrine in the ancient world and in which a giant statue of Athena was worshipped.

Paul was being typically provocative.

Then he said this about the true God: He has fixed a day on which He will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed, and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead.

There’s the heart of it: the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead was the validation of His messianic claim and therefore the ground for Paul’s declaration of Jesus as the Kyrios, the Lord and Judge of the world.

When the learned debaters here on the Areopagus heard this, many scoffed, but a few others said, We will hear you again about this.

If those few interested people had listened further, what would they have heard?

There were, of course, many viewpoints among thoughtful people at the time concerning what happens after we die.

Paul would have been acquainted with all of these perspectives, but his message of resurrection was something completely different.

He did not say that Jesus had gone to Sheol or that He was vaguely with God, nor did he express a mere hope that one day he would arise along with the saints.

He most certainly did not claim that Jesus' soul had escaped from His body.

He declared that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth arose bodily from the realm of the dead and exists now in a transfigured physicality.

Paul lays out this basic teaching in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians.

I'm here in front of the Bema; that was the ancient speaker's platform.

Paul would have preached from this very spot.

We can almost imagine him preaching these words aloud to the Corinthians: For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn have received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and then He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

Now listen to how Paul specifies this: He appeared to Cephas—that's Peter—then to the Twelve.

Then He appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.

Then He appeared to James, and then to all the apostles, and last of all, He appeared to me.

This is just not the way someone who’s trading in abstract philosophy or mythology speaks.

Paul is naming very specific, definite people to whom Jesus appeared, and he’s implying you could check with them if you want.

How important was the Resurrection for Paul?

Listen to this also from 1 Corinthians 15: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.

If for this life only we’ve hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

We worship a crucified God.

I mean, here we are in the Parthenon, and you worship the gods and goddesses of ancient creation—these mighty figures that the true God makes Himself manifest in this 30-year-old guy dying on an instrument of torture outside Jerusalem, saying, God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

And then we say, That's it.

See, that was Paul’s message.

Paul said this is folly to the Greeks and it’s a scandal to the Jews.

In other words, what I’m saying is bound to annoy everyone.

No one will get this: a 30-year-old man dying on a terrible instrument of torture, saying, Why have you abandoned me, oh God?

That’s God!

That’s God!

That’s the true God!

So it’s God revealed precisely as this face of compassionate love and of abandonment to the point of death.

That’s the dynamite of Christianity.

See, God did not raise Julius Caesar from the dead.

He did not raise Charlemagne from the dead.

He did not raise Genghis Khan from the dead.

He raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and that makes all the difference.

So the true God is revealed precisely there.

That’s the dynamite that Paul had.

That’s what he got on one of his sojourns in Corinth.

Paul wrote the greatest of his epistles, the letter to the Romans.

The principal theme of this text is participation in Christ.

It’s been said you’d understand all of Paul if you understood the full meaning of this little phrase in Christ, used over and over again in his writings.

It seems to designate what the French call participation mystique—mystical participation—to enter into the power of something.

See, for Paul, the risen Jesus was an energy, was a field of force, or to use one of his favorite terms, a dunamis, a power.

The idea was to enter into that column.

This, I think, is the master idea in St. Paul: it’s by mystical participation in Christ that we are set right, that we are justified.

Now, how does that process happen?

The first step for Paul is always faith.

It’s by faith we are justified.

Faith means trust; it means confidence, turning one’s life over to the power of Christ.

See, Paul knew our trouble began through lack of faith.

Go back to the very beginning of the book of Genesis, and you find Adam and Eve grasping at the knowledge of good and evil.

They’re grasping at godliness, making themselves the center of their lives.

What follows from that is a shrinking of the self, a caving in around the self.

We begin to live in the very small space of the narrow soul.

What’s faith?

It’s a turning one’s life over to a power that stretches infinitely beyond us.

Therefore, it’s an invitation to a spiritual adventure.

That’s the beginning of righteousness for Paul: to trust in the power of Christ.

Catholics, following Paul, talk about justification and then this increase in justification which comes through love.

Paul wants us fully participating in Christ; he wants us swimming in the power and energy of Christ, and that comes when we are conformed unto His love.

Paul gives particularly clear expressions to the relationship between faith and love in his magnificent First Letter to the Corinthians.

One of the very best summaries of Paul’s spiritual and theological thought is the 13th chapter of the First Letter he wrote to the Christian Church here.

It also ranks as one of the gems of the Western literary tradition.

I'm talking about the hymn to love.

Paul was addressing a Christian community here that had become preoccupied with the more spectacular manifestations of the spiritual life—speaking in tongues, trading in words of knowledge, engaging in prophecies.

He wanted to bring them back to what is fundamental, and so he spoke of the superiority of love.

Here’s how 1 Corinthians chapter 13 begins: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I’m a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith enough to move mountains but have not love, I am nothing.

Paul himself spoke in tongues; he claimed a mystical experience of the third heaven.

He certainly sang the praises of faith, but he’s asserting here that without love, these all count for nothing.

How could that be true?

It’s true because God is love.

Love is the divine life, and the whole purpose of spirituality is to get that life in us.

Therefore, to have all the accompaniments of the divine life without the thing itself indeed counts for nothing.

Ready to go?

We’ll have a little prayer asking God’s blessing on our efforts.

We’ll have a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

What is love?

Love is not primarily a feeling or emotion, though it can be accompanied by those.

It is, instead, willing the good of the other as other.

It is to escape the black hole of one’s own clinging egotism and to live for someone else.

This is why Paul explains that love is patient, love is kind.

The person characterized by true love is not interested in reciprocation but simply in the good of the other, and therefore he’s willing to wait out any resistance.

This is why, as Paul insists, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant.

True love has no truck with this sort of resentment, for it wants the success of the other.

Once we understand the nature of true love...

We know why, as Paul says, it bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.

Paul concludes his hymn with the observation that love never ends.

In heaven, when we’re sharing the divine life completely, faith will end because we’ll see and not merely believe.

In heaven, hope will end because we will have realized our deepest longings.

But in heaven, love will endure because the very life of heaven is love.

That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:13, And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

In saying this, Paul sums up not only his own theology; he sums up the very essence of the Christian life.

Everything else is commentary.

So people say to me, How do I be happy?

I’m unhappy all the time; I just want to be happy.

So you perform the simplest act of love.

Find some kid that needs help, sit down, and help them.

Bake cookies for someone and hand them out.

Perform the simplest act of love, and you are living the divine life.

You are in harmony with the power that’s here and now making the universe.

That’s Christianity.

That’s why Paul says the greatest of these is love.

Love is what remains; love is what abides, and that’s why everything else is commentary.

That’s why I mentioned at the outset that Peter and Paul are enduring archetypes in the life of the Church.

Peter, who led the original band of the Twelve, stands for office, structure, hierarchy, and headship—all those ways that the Church is ordered to achieve its purpose.

And Paul, who went out to the nations as an evangelist to the Gentiles, stands for mission, the engagement of the culture, and proclamation.

The two together, in intensive harmonies, have propelled the Church through the centuries and around the world.

The spirit of Peter and Paul has led Christian missionaries to every corner of the globe.

To give just one example from relatively recent history, European missionaries brought the faith to sub-Saharan Africa in the middle of the 19th century.

One of the most extraordinary fruits of that African mission was the witness of the vibrant and youthful Church of Uganda in the face of terrible persecution.

In 1885, a particularly wicked Ugandan king sought sexual favors from certain young Christians in his court.

When the young men refused, they were brutally put to death and joined thereby the great company of martyrs.

One of the most festive liturgies on the African continent today takes place on the feast day of these courageous and faithful witnesses.

The Church Father Tertullian said, The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians.

Is that true in this case?

You tell me.