Sunday, 6/29/14
Today we honor the great saints, Peter and Paul. They had met
only briefly in their lifetimes, but we honor them together because they both
died in Rome after founding the Church there.
In the year 180 St. Irenaeus looked back on that joint role
of Peter and Paul In implanting the teaching of Christ in Rome.
Let me switch for a moment to the story of Irenaeus. He had
been serving as the bishop of Lyons in France when the pope asked him to come
to Rome to deal with a new kind of Christians called Gnostics. The Gnostics
were claiming to have new gospels dictated to them by angels.
Irenaeus went to Rome, and instead of arguing with the
Gnostics, he took to attending their gatherings, taking notes on all their new
teachings. Having made friends with them by his openness, he gradually brought
them around to seeing why the pope differed from them.
Mainly, Irenaeus had them recalling something St. Paul had
written to the Galatians, namely, “Even
if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one we
preached to you, let that one be accursed.”
In that year 180 when Irenaeus was writing these things, the
Christians in France, Spain, Alexandria still had old people who had listened to the preaching of one or another of the twelve apostles who
had settled in their countries.
Irenaeus told the Gnostics that if they wanted to hear the
genuine teachings of Jesus, they should go to those early churches founded by Apostles.
He said that the bishops in those places held firm to the teaching they had
received from the Apostles.
Irenaeus went on then to say, “Since it would be very tedious to reckon up the succession of all the
churches, we will indicate that tradition derived from the apostles of the very
great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized in
Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul. It is a matter of
necessity that every church should agree with this church.”
So, in honoring Peter and Paul together we are thanking them
for handing on the true teachings of Jesus.
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