Saints Peter and Paul

 Being exposed to both the Gospels and the Epistles throughout the Worship Calendar for each year, we are certainly not unfamiliar with Saints Peter and Paul.  But as to knowledge of what happened to them as missionaries, we begin to lose sight of who they are to the Church.

We speak often of how the Church’s teachings about any particular Feast come from Her hymnology.  And so let us give consideration on this day to some of the hymns that come from Matins for this Feast Day.  The following are three Kathisma from the service.  The first sings the praises of St. Peter.

Having abandoned the fishing grounds, you received from the Father Himself the revelation of the Word’s Incarnation, and as one who is privileged you cried to all, saying to your Creator, ‘I have known You as Son of God, consubstantial with Him.  Therefore you were truly revealed as the rock of faith, as is proper, and a trustee of the keys of grace.  Intercede, therefore, O Apostle Peter, with Christ our God to grant forgiveness of sins to those who eagerly celebrate your memory.

The second sings the praises of St. Paul

From heaven, from Christ our God, you received the call, and you appeared as the preacher of Light, illuminating all with the teachings of grace; for having challenged the worship of the written Law, you caused the knowledge of the Spirit to rise for believers.  Therefore you worthily ascended to the third heaven and attained Paradise.  Therefore, O Holy Apostle Paul, intercede with Christ our God to grant forgiveness of sins to those who eagerly celebrate your holy memory.

And a third that praises both.

Let us extol those two great luminaries of exceeding radiance, the all-wise Peter and Paul, who have been manifested as heads of the Disciples, radiating with the fire of the Divine Spirit, and burning up the darkness of error, thus attaining worthily their abode in the kingdom on high, being equal in grace and rank.  Therefore we cry out to them saying, ‘O Apostles of Christ our God, seek forgiveness of sins for those who eagerly celebrate your holy memory.

In the services for this day the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul are glorified, as friends of Christ,  of the heavenly recesses, rivers of knowledge, feeders of the entire inhabited world, preachers of true piety, intercessors for the whole world, disciples of Christ and founders of the Church, true pillars and walls, and trumpets of the doctrine and suffering of the divine Christ, fishers of the world, possessors of the keys of the Kingdom, prototypes of the preachers of God, chiefs of the Apostles.

The Prologue records these words:

Unlearned and learned but equal in spirit and in the love of God, as strong as angels, Peter a simple man, Paul educated, both illumined, by the grace of the Spirit, two flaming candles, unquenchable, towering and beautiful, two brilliant stars, traversed the earth and spread the light. Nothing did they take, to men they gave all, completely poor, the world they enriched, prisoners and servants, conquered the entire world with the teaching of Christ, enriched the world, with a new weapon conquered the entire world: by humility and peace and meekness blessed, Prayer and fasting and mercy powerful. When to them, that stormy day, arrived the stormy night, bloodthirsty Nero, their life cut short.  But when the ruler of the world, a command issued and to suffering, gave over Peter and Paul the world was theirs and not his [Nero's] anymore, by death, the apostles gained the Kingdom.

The Comforter

 Since the bright day of our Lord’s Resurrection, we’ve refrained from using “the prayer of the Holy Spirit.”  In none of our Divine Services have we uttered His prayer:

O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who is everywhere present and fills all things.  Treasury of blessings, and Giver of Life: Come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One!

Our refraining from offering this prayer in no way detracts from our worship of nor our honor toward the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.  It is simply a move toward first and foremost the importance of the Resurrection in our lives.  For those forty days we dedicate deference to Christ’s Life Creating work of Resurrection, His destruction of death BY His death!

And for the intervening ten days we give that same deference to the recognition of His Glorious Ascension, for it is by this creative act that mankind is blessed to receive the path to His heavenly kingdom, and that we as His created race find a body like ours seated at the right hand of the Father—in Glory!

Today, the Holy Church returns to Her “normal” practice of worship.  Today we reinstitute the practice of kneeling, something that also “disappeared” with the advent of our Lord’s Resurrection.

There’s another Liturgical ‘change’ that we reinstate today that has also been missing for the past fifty days.  This is our offering the hymn sung after the Holy Eucharist is returned to the Altar after communing the faithful:

We have seen the True Light.  We have received the Heavenly Spirit.  We have found the True Faith, worshipping the undivided Trinity, Who has saved us.

Our Lord taught us, I am the Light of the world.  He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

And so within this prayer, we acknowledge the fullness of the Trinity—Christ as the One Who illumines us in faith, the Holy Spirit Who fills us with His understanding, and the Father as the Completion of the Divine Trinity.  For as the hymn states clearly, it is through the Holy Trinity that we find salvation.

We find the full revelation of the Trinity once again in the Church’s hymnology from Vespers:

Come, O people, let us worship the Godhead in three Persons: the Son in the Father, with the Holy Spirit.  For the Father timelessly begot the Son, co-eternal and co-enthroned with Him; and the Holy Spirit was in the Father and is glorified with the Son.  We worship one Power, one Essence, one Godhead, and we say: “Holy God, Who created all things through Your Son with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit; Holy Mighty, through Whom we know the Father; and through Whom the Holy Spirit came to dwell in the world; Holy Immortal, Comforting Spirit, Who proceeded from the Father and rests in the Son.  O Holy Trinity, glory to You!”

On this day, let us all worship God in Trinity, one in essence, and undivided, Who loves His creation mankind sufficiently to become one of us, and to dwell among and in us!

From 'The Prologue' for 11May

 REFLECTION:

In the Saracen encampment they asked St. Cyril, "How can Christians wage war and at the same time keep Christ's commandment to pray to God for their enemies?"

To this, St. Cyril replied, "If two commandments were written in one law and given to men for fulfilling, which man would be a better follower of the law, the one who fulfilled one commandment, or the one who fulfilled both?"

The Saracens replied, "Undoubtedly, he who fulfills both commandments."

St. Cyril continued, "Christ our God commands us to pray to God for those who persecute us and even to do good to them.  But He also said to us, "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13)."  That is why we bear the insults that our enemies cast at us individually and why we pray to God for them.  However, as a society, we defend one another and lay down our lives, so that you would not enslave our brethren, would not enslave their souls with their bodies, and would not destroy them in both body and soul."