On Friday, we contemplated the Sacred Heart of Jesus, source of mercy and redemptive love, celebrated from Popes Clement XIII and Leo XIII to Pius XII and Francis. This Sunday, on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, we contemplated a feast that leads us from a profound encounter with the Heart of Christ to the apostolic witness of Sts. Peter and Paul. We reflect on these two great witnesses of faith who gave their lives to proclaim the Gospel and build the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2005 homily for this feast, reminded us that we celebrate not only our saints but also the universality of the Church. St. Peter, a simple fisherman from Galilee, and St. Paul, a Pharisee from Tarsus, joined their forces in proclaiming a single Gospel capable of gathering all peoples into one body. Where does this universal mission originate? It originates from the Heart of Christ, wounded and glorified, the source of the Church. In a way, this universal mission is the link between these two feasts.
The Pierced Heart and the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church
In the encyclical Haurietis aquas, Pope Pius XII invites us to see the Heart of Christ not just as a symbol but as the true center of our Faith. It is a Heart that loves, suffers, and forgives. Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that the foundation of Catholicity is that God revealed Himself in Christ, who bears the wounds of His redemptive love. This redemptive love is explained by St. Bonaventure in Lignum Vitae, when he talks about Longinus piercing the side of Christ, rendering this love sacramental, an efficacious sign of grace, much like the Church is. The two sacraments to which the Church refers the pouring out of water and blood are Baptism and the Eucharist, respectively. (cf. Lignum Vitae 30)
The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is Holy because of this purifying love of Christ, the Holy One announced since the Abrahamic Covenant of Genesis 12:1-3. The Church is not merely a global organization, but a spiritual, universal reality that arises from the pierced side of the Redeemer. Here, the promise of Psalm 21 is fulfilled: “All the families of the nations will bow down before Him.” In Him we see Israel. In Him we see the fulfillment of the Covenant. In Him we see the Church, the New and Eternal Covenant which brings all people together, hence the oneness, the holiness, the universal Catholicity, and the apostolicity which seeks to bring believers of good will together.
Saints Peter and Paul: Two Hearts United in the Heart of Christ
St. Peter proclaimed in Matthew 16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is after others had made claims of Our Lord’s prophetic semblances. After all, his priesthood is prophetic, and St. Peter concludes that not only is He a Prophet (one who unveils the meaning of the Law), but He is King because He is God. His Kingship is not limited to that which we consider in merely earthly terms. His Kingship is much deeper because it is founded on the Truth, the Way, and the Life. It is divine. He rules over our hearts by converting us, not by conquest and external strength but by the greatest strength of all: interior conviction vivified by the power of the Holy Spirit, Dominum et vivificantem.
St. Paul, on the other hand, stated, “He loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Both speak of the Heart of Jesus: St. Peter as the rock of faith, St. Paul as the apostle who lives in the love of Christ. It is like the movement of the two divine missions, from the Logos which is confirmed with the interior workings of the Holy Spirit inhabiting us.
Catholicity: Unity in Diversity, Love in Truth
The Church is Catholic not only for her universality but also because she embraces diversity within the Heart of Christ. After all, everything that God creates is unique. He does not create clones. He creates individual beings whom He loves and claims seven times in Genesis 1, “this is good.” Like the one light that shines forth many rays of a prism, created reality that stems forth from God the Creator is beautifully diverse.
Beauty in this way is true, very much reminding us of the wonderful expression Pope John Paul II used to open his encyclical on morality, Veritatis Splendor. Truth is resplendent. Beauty, as Pythagoras reminds us, in fact, is whole, symmetrical, and resplendent. The unique beauty of each individual creature is evident. If you look at any leaf, it is not a copy of another. It is marvelous to understand this. It is edifying and enchanting to confirm through science that what is revealed is what gives all of these cosmographical facts truly cosmological meaning and truth. This is the miracle of Pentecost: different peoples recognizing each other as brothers, different peoples recognizing the meaning of life united to the same God.
As Benedict XVI warns us, Catholicity has a vertical dimension: only by looking to God can we be one. This is the key: union with God the Creator. It reminds us of Jesus’ words: “Without me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5). Man’s dignity is based on this relation with God. Detached from Him, we lose our being, our dignity, and the modern world which claimed this autonomy from God is now witnessing the fruits of such a divorce from God: from the dignity of man qua man in 15th-century Pico della Mirandola to the disgrace of man in 21st-century posthumanism. After all, as Etienne Gilson reminds us, “everything that exists in virtue of the creative action and endures in virtue of creative action, remains radically contingent in itself and in constant peril of lapsing back into nothingness” (The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, 1991, p. 114.). The splendor of which Pico della Mirandola spoke was not in itself but because it reflects God.
The Heart of Christ is the point of convergence where truth unites with love, where the Church finds its unity in the foundation of the Apostles, and we see how the universality of Catholicism has a great diversity of cultures, unlike the “equal” sameness of globalization. If one notices in Europe, for instance, we see how the individuality of each people is most evident among those who are most Catholic and how that individuality is lost when they seek to be “cosmopolitan,” losing touch with their Catholic roots. This is the irony. In seeking autonomy from Our Lord and His Church, one loses oneself, becoming a mere copy of another. However, in seeking union with Our Lord in His Church, one becomes more oneself, blossoming into a beautiful individuality. This applies to individual people as well as to individual cultures, and it is this blend of cultures which form a universal, Catholic civilization known as Christendom. It indeed reminds us of St. Augustine:
I do not know in what inexplicable way it happens that those who love themselves and not God do not truly love themselves, while those who love God and not themselves truly love themselves. For whoever cannot live for themselves cannot help but die while loving themselves: thus, they do not love themselves who love in such a way that they do not live. (Treatise 123 on John, no. 5)
A Missionary Heart, a Priestly Heart
Benedict XVI emphasizes that St. Peter calls Jesus “the Holy One of God,” a reference to self-offering. Here, the priestly heart of Christ is revealed, which is the center and foundation of the Church. Sts. Peter and Paul understood that the Church is born from this offering; for this reason, they gave their lives so that the world might know the love that has conquered death.
In Haurietis aquas, Pius XII insists that the Heart of Christ calls us to mission. Love cannot remain closed within itself; it wants to go out and reach every person. It is divine. In fact, we understand from Exodus 3:15 that God is Being Himself (“I am who am.”), and we learn in 1 John 4 that “God is love.” This being is dynamic because it is love, the love of a Father. This love is the goodness that diffuses itself in a life-giving way, the so-called bonum diffusivum sui of the loving Creator and Redeemer. In fact, Sts. Peter and Paul show us a dynamic divine love that evangelizes, that suffers, that gives everything, very much reflecting the source of love and life, God.
This mission is also entrusted to us. To the extent that our hearts are united with His, we can testify to the truth that saves, without fear, with joy.
Conclusion: United in the Heart of Christ, Builders of Unity
The Church will truly be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic to the extent that each of us lives united to the Heart of Jesus. Let us look to Sts. Peter and Paul: different, yet united; human, yet transformed; shepherds, martyrs, witnesses. Let us now turn our gaze to Christ, to His Heart, to His Eucharist, to His Church. And let us say with faith, as St. Peter did: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68). Ad quem ibimus Domine? Indeed, where shall we go?
Image from Wikimedia Commons
