My Patron Saint
Recently was my Feast Day, the celebration of Saint Peter and Saint Paul on June 29th. When I was in Italy they commemorated this more triumphantly than my birthday. I was gifted with gold crosses and jewelry ending with a special dinner. If only everybody celebrated the lives of the Saints in this manned; every day would be a triumph for the Church! I remember the six years at the Bangor Theological Seminary en route to getting a Masters in Divinity and the protestant inquiry into the Primacy of Saint Peter. Of course they would never refer to him as a saint as in this particular tradition, we are all saints. As true as this may be, and for the brevity of this reflection, I will not get into the saints with the lower case letter and the ones with the capital letter. Suffice to say, the Catholic-Orthodox tradition of venerating Saints is simply a respect for God, the Church, and the individuals that we know gave their lives for the Faith. Devaluing this is simply disrespectful and a bit arrogant. So what about Saint Peter? As one protestant student interpreted, “Perhaps Jesus was referring to his head as the Rock as Peter was certainly stubborn at times.” As the student went forward to hypothesize, Jesus even knocked on Peter’s head to demonstrate the Rock-like substance, He was describing. How foolish! The simple response would have been that the context of renaming Simon does not in any way lend itself to this conclusion. Furthermore the context most certainly suggests the building of a Church; if not THE Church. Regardless, the ordination name of Peter places him above the other apostles as the one Jesus chooses to focus in maintaining His tradition. The protestant denomination that I served in most recently, suggested that the Primacy of Peter in no way reflected the supremacy of the Roman Church, however, was foundational to all churches. Perhaps, this is true in many ways, but thankfully the direction in which our Lord led Saint Peter was certainly to proclaim the Gospel to ends of the earth which focused Peter’s attention on Rome where he was subsequently martyred. Of course in the evangelical world the account of Peter being crucified is ignored as it is not “biblical” which proves the inadequacy of any movement that refuses to acknowledge 2000 years of Christian tradition. I want to end this reflection by reminding all movements and all denominations, even Rome, that regardless of the numbers in the movement, or the desire in which God wishes to use the movement, we need to be weary and respectful of the traditions of all Christian churches especially if we seek unity in community. The lesson I have in my patron Saint Peter is that he was always willing to do what Christ instructed him to do and to be self-critical when he failed.
