The ancient Christian Church sometimes knew rival hierarchies in the great cities of the Mediterrean world. The bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, for the most part, largely determined the history of the Church until the four Oriental sees were overcome by Islamic troops. St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Athanasius of Alexandria were among their bishops. But while these early prelates were debating doctrines and disciplines, a cohort of desert fathers and mothers were experiencing lives of Scripture study, solitary prayer, and personal sacrifice in the sandy solitude of Egypt. St. Anthony of the Desert was an early hermit. St. Ammas Syncletica was an anchoress.
Later in history as the See of Roman became the dominant ecclesial force in the Western World, the Pope and his cardinals were certainly a dominant force in Church history. Saints Leo and Gregory and Nicholas all earned the title “Great” for their work in that era. But at the same time, St. Benedict was establishing a religious order of monks that would transform the culture of Europe through their extensive monasteries.
The Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation of course saw fighting Popes like Urban II who led the first crusade and artistic Popes like Julius II who sponsored Michelangelo and besieged Popes like Paul III who called the Council of Trent. But amid such cultural events, Francis of Assisi was reaching out toward the poor and downcast. Dominic Guzman was ridding France of Albigensians. Ignatius Loyola was founding a company that would extend to Asia and America. Bridget of Sweden organized a band of religious women.
More lately in the nineteenth century Pope Leo XIII would speak out for workers and labor rights. In the early twentieth century Pope Benedict XV would make overtures toward the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Pius XI would deplore Nazism. More lately Pope John Paul II would greatly effect the downfall of Soviet Communism in Eastern Europe. Again in the 19th and 20th centuries, notable Catholic religious women including Catherine McAuley, Katherine Drexel, Mary Mackillop, and Frances Xavier Cabrini each established religious congregations with a focus on education, healthcare, and service to the poor.
Perhaps the reader can perceive parallel channels of Church history in this sketchy analysis of Roman Catholicism’s two millennia. There clearly has been an organized, hierarchical Church of popes, bishops, priests, deacons, and laity. The Holy See, the various archdioceses and dioceses, and the assorted parishes have largely cared for the varied sacramental needs of these constituencies. But then there have been the hermits and the anchorites, the monks and the nuns, the brothers and the sisters, the cloistered and the missionaries, the prayer groups and the bible studies that have inspired grand charismatic adventures during the Church’s 2000 years. Certainly the organized Church and the charismatic church have been greatly inter-dependent, the one offering guidance, the other proposing innovation. And this is no accident.
This Sunday the Universal Church celebrates the Solemnity of Ss. Peter and Paul, certainly two great founding saints of the Christian community. St. Peter, a married Galilee fisherman with a family, called early by Christ to join the apostolic band, a witness to virtually all of Christ’s miracles, public preaching, fraternal advice, and frequent rejection. St. Peter was one of the chosen called aside to witness the Transfiguration and the Agony in the garden. St. Peter is recorded in all four Gospels as making a personal and foundational profession of faith in Christ as the awaited Messiah. St. Peter was explicitly nominated by Christ as visible head of the Church on earth as the writings especially of St. Matthew, St. John and St. Paul note. Reliable tradition recalls St. Peter as the martyred head of the Church at Rome.
St. Paul, quite on the other hand, was an educated Jewish Pharisee, from Grecian Tarsus, with no report of a family. St. Paul never met Jesus Christ in person and in fact violently persecuted the early Christian community. After his conversion, he deepened his Christian life by solitary prayer in Arabia for ten years and only cautiously approached the Apostolic band in Jerusalem. His name is connected with no diocese but is recalled as an avid missionary to the Mediterrean world and author of several pastoral letters. He too died a martyr at Rome.
In St. Peter, the institutional Church has its heroic prototype. In St. Paul, the charismatic church has its equally valiant paradigm. SS. Peter and Paul, our diocesan patrons, pray for our local church!
