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St Peter and St Paul
The feast of St Peter and St Paul on 29th June each year is very special for me for a number of reasons. St Peter’s Berkhamsted was the church where I received my calling to be ordained some thirty years ago and St Paul’s Tring was the place where I served my curacy. The Church keeps the festival of St Peter and St Paul, two apostles whose names have shaped Christian memory, mission and worship from the earliest days. In the Anglican tradition this is a joyful festival: a day to give thanks for the Church’s apostolic foundation and to ask afresh what it means to confess Christ faithfully in our own generation. It is also the time when many ordinands start their ordained ministry within the church.
Peter and Paul were very different men. Peter was a Galilean fisherman, often impulsive, quick to speak, courageous one moment and fearful the next. Yet it was Peter who declared to Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”, and in that confession the Church still hears the rock-like faith on which Christian witness stands. Peter is encouraging precisely because he is not flawless. He stumbles, denies, repents, and is restored. After the resurrection, Christ entrusts him with the care of the flock: “Feed my sheep.” Peter reminds us that Christian discipleship is not about never failing, but about being recalled again and again by the mercy of God.
Paul’s witness is equally compelling. Once Saul the persecutor, he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and was changed forever. From that moment he became the great missionary apostle, carrying the gospel across boundaries of language, culture and custom. His letters continue to nourish the Church’s theology, prayer and common life. If Peter shows us the grace of restoration, Paul shows us the grace of transformation. No past is beyond God’s redemption; no life is beyond God’s call as I discovered on the Wednesday morning thirty years ago in May at St Peter’s church in Berkhamsted.
Why are they kept together on the same day? Because together they express something essential about the Church. Peter speaks of continuity, pastoral care and the gathered community of faith. Paul speaks of movement, mission and the outward call of the gospel to the nations. The Church needs both: rootedness and reach, steadiness and boldness, tradition and evangelism. Ancient tradition associates both apostles with martyrdom in Rome, and so their shared feast is also a reminder that the Church is built not only on teaching and leadership, but on costly witness.
In Common Worship, Peter and Paul are honoured with a festival on 29th June, and the appointed readings and prayers draw our attention to confession, calling, deliverance and perseverance. This is fitting for Anglican life, which treasures the Church’s apostolic inheritance not as a museum piece but as a living vocation.
We are called to be a Church grounded in Scripture, shaped by sacrament, and sent out in service to the world. The witness of these two saints belongs not only to the first century, but to every parish and every congregation seeking to be faithful today.
As we mark this feast, we may well pray for the gifts Peter and Paul embody: Peter’s steadfast love for Christ and Paul’s tireless zeal for the gospel. In a changing and sometimes uncertain world, the Church still needs disciples who will speak the truth in love, endure failure without despair, and carry the good news beyond familiar boundaries. On 29th June, St Peter and St Paul invite us not simply to admire them, but to follow Christ with the same courage, humility and hope.
For us at St Mary’s, as we continue to pray for someone to ‘come and be our vicar’, let’s hang on with the same courage, humility and hope and PUSH on (Pray Until Something Happens).
Martin
