🕁 The Holy, Glorious, All-Praiseworthy and Chief Apostles Peter and Paul.
All-Night Vigil Feast.
2 Corinthians 11:21-12:9; Matthew 16:13-19.
Read 2 Corinthians 11:21-12:9
Today the Church celebrates the feast of the holy, glorious, all-praiseworthy and chief apostles, Peter and Paul. These pillars of the Church, as they are called, were both martyred in Rome, under the Emperor Nero around the year 67 AD.
The troparion of today’s feast extols these two men as “leaders of the apostles and teachers of the whole world” The Greek word used here for leader is koryphaioi. In ancient Greek theater the koryphaioi were the leaders of the chorus. They set the pattern for the group to follow, serving as a reference point for the singing, dance movements, gestures of the rest. This role was meant to keep the whole group unified and moving in the same pattern so that their message could be clearly seen and understood by the audience.
From this we learn that leadership in the Church is first and foremost an act of service. The goal is to make Christ seen and understood by facilitating unity around His teachings and the way of life handed onto us by the Apostles. This task necessarily excludes the pride that would try to do things our own way without reference to the tradition of the Church as one of the early successors of St. Peter, Clement of Rome reminds us, “Let us therefore, brethren, be of humble mind, laying aside all haughtiness, and pride, and foolishness…mindful of the words of the Lord Jesus which He spake, teaching us meekness and long-suffering.” (1 Clement 13)
Christ, is the true koryphaios, upon whom all leadership in the Church is patterned. The ability to do this does not come from ourselves, but from His grace which is sufficient for us (2 Cor. 12:9) and which makes up for what is lacking in us.
Of course leaders in the church remain human and when we fall short of this ideal, we must repent, rise, and answer with St. Peter the question posed to him by Jesus: “Do you love me? (John 21:17). St. Paul affirms the primacy of love in his first letter to the Corinthians, “if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor. 13:2)
As we celebrate the feast today, then, let us look to the pattern set for us by these two koryphaioi – one of humble leadership, bold confession of faith, heartfelt repentance and love for Christ, and let us sing with the Church, “With what beautiful hymns shall we praise Peter and Paul? They are wings of divine knowledge, spreading out to the far ends of the earth and soaring aloft to heaven. They are two heads of the Gospel of grace, two feet of the preaching of the truth, two rivers of wisdom and two arms of the Cross, through which the merciful Christ casts down the pride of demons.” (Stichera at O, Lord I have cried)