Saints For the Month of June; 2003 Peter was the most impetuous of Jesus's apostles and also in many ways their............. leader. Jesus, meeting him when he was a fisherman of Galilee, promised to make him a 'fisher of men'. he was a married man, with a brother named Andrew, who was also a fisherman and, like Peter, called to follow Jesus. Peter's name originally was Simon, Jesus changed it to Kephas, an Aramaic meaning 'rock' (from which we take our English translation Peter). When Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was, Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. 'Jesus said to him, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death will not prevail against it.' He added: ' I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. ' Only later was this power extended to the rest of the apostles. Peter sometimes let Jesus down, especially when he promised he would die with his Lord and then three times told people that he had never known Jesus. Yet he was the first of the apostles to be given sight of the Risen Lord, and Jesus told him that his responsibility was to feed the flock of Christ's followers. Probably the saint wrote at least the first of the letters attributed him in the New Testament; and tradition is almost certainly right in saying that he was martyred in Rome under Nero -- perhaps by being crucified upside-down. There is a spot below the alter in the Vatican which tradition honours as his grave. 'Be sober be
vigilant; because your adversary the devil, First Letter of St Peter Tradition has it that St Paul was also martyred in Rome, though as a Roman citizen he had the right to be beheaded with a sword and not crucified. Paul was a tent-maker and a fanatical opponent of Christians, urging bystanders to stone St Stephen and trying to bring as many Christians as possible to their deaths. Thrown from his horse on the way to Damascus, he had a vision of Jesus and was converted. Tirelessly he preached his new faith, writing letter after letter to the churches he had founded. He led the mission to non-Jews. Flogged, imprisoned, starving, stoned shipwrecked and on trial, he never lost his faith. The supreme gift he preached was love 'If I speak
in the tongue of men and of angels, but
have not love, Saint Paul Richard. F. Sibley. June 2003 |