“I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)
Brothers and sisters,
Today, Holy Church sets before us not one saint, but two. Not one path, but two pilgrimages. Not one voice, but two echoes of Christ—Peter and Paul—bound forever together not by similarity, but by grace.
Peter, the fisherman from Galilee—impulsive, loyal, deeply human. Paul, the scholar from Tarsus—relentless, brilliant, once a persecutor of the very name he would die to proclaim. These men could not have been more different, and yet their lives converged in a single cruciform truth: Jesus Christ had claimed them, utterly and forever.
Here in our abbey, where words are few and silence is our teacher, we are given the gift to hear their lives more clearly. Stripped of the noise of the world, we can listen not only to their words in Scripture, but to the transformation their lives underwent—the slow conversion of the soul that often speaks loudest in the stillness.
Peter teaches us that failure is not the end. His denial, his weakness, his fear—all of it became soil for mercy to grow. When the cock crowed, he wept. And in that weeping, he was not cast out but called again: “Simon, do you love me?” Christ does not discard the fragile. He builds His Church upon it.
And Paul—Paul shows us the violence of grace. He was not gently persuaded. He was blinded. Thrown down. He heard a Voice that shattered his certainties and remade his vision. In Paul we see how the Word pierces like a sword, how truth disrupts, arrests, and demands total response.
We in the cloister are not asked to preach to the nations or shepherd vast flocks. Our pulpits are our prayer stalls, our mission field is the interior wilderness. But the witness of Peter and Paul reaches us nonetheless. From Peter, we learn to let mercy reach even our most hidden betrayals. From Paul, we are reminded that no zeal for lesser things—no matter how passionate—can replace the transforming light of the risen Christ.
They both died in Rome. They both gave their blood. But they also gave their silence—those long nights in prison, the weary walks between towns, the unrecorded prayers. We, too, live in the hidden hours. And it is in these hours that the Lord fashions saints.
So, beloved brothers and sisters, on this solemnity, let us not measure ourselves by the vastness of our mission, but by our availability to grace. Let us not seek greatness, but truth. Let us not crave clarity, but faithfulness.
Peter’s keys, Paul’s sword—they are not symbols of power, but of surrender. One was entrusted with the Church; the other with the nations. But both were first conquered by love.
May we be, too.