I sometimes wonder what it
would have been like for Jesus, if he had decided to start the Church in our
present day and age. I imagine that he would have received lots of advice from
his followers on the best structure of management. I am certain that one of the
first things he would have been advised to do would be to form an LLC. In
addition to limiting his liability, I'm sure that someone would have insisted
that Jesus’ twelve apostles undergo some sort of testing to make sure that they
were worthy of such a demanding and difficult job as fishers of men and leaders
of the Church founded by Christ himself. And more than likely, when these
reports came back on the twelve apostles, it would sound something like this:
“Thank
you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have picked for managerial
positions in your new Church. All of them have taken our battery of tests and we
have scored the results. After arranging personality interviews for each of
them with our psychologist and other consultants, it is the opinion of our
staff that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education
and vocational aptitude for the
enterprise. They have no team concept. Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and
given to fits of temper. Andrew has no qualities for leadership. The two
brothers James and John place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas
shows a skeptical attitude that would tend to undermine morale and authority.
Matthew, the former tax-collector, has been blacklisted by the Jerusalem Better
Business Bureau. James, the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus definitely have
radical leanings and registered a high score on the manic-depressive scale. One
of the candidates however, shows real potential. He is a man of ability and
resourcefulness, meets people well, and has contacts in high places. He is
highly motivated, ambitious, and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as
your comptroller and right-hand man.”
While
this assessment of the twelve might seem crazy to you and me today; in human
terms, it is pretty much dead-on. And if there is anything that our feast today
teaches us, it's that God's power can transform anyone into vessel of his grace. That includes those of us who,
humanly speaking, feel unqualified, unable, or unworthy to follow in the footsteps of these great men. This
solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul also shows us that God can bring about great
things through situations and persons which seem to us to be impossible or
unlikely.
Look
at St. Peter; here was a man who was impulsive and uneducated. He abandoned the
Lord in his hour of need. Simon Peter also denied Christ three times, right
after Jesus foretold it. And even today in our gospel, after being highly
praised by Christ for his insight into who he was, Peter will blow it. Just
four verses after this glowing praise, Christ will say to him, "get behind
me satan" when Peter scolds him for talking about his death on the cross.
And what about St. Paul;
what a mess he was. He held the cloaks of the men who murdered St. Stephen. He
devoted himself to the imprisonment and persecution of the early Church. Here
was a man who was downright dangerous and cruel to anyone who professed belief
in Christ Jesus.
How
could anyone know that these two men, along with the other apostles, would
become the greatest saints of our Church? No amount of testing, training, or
preparation would have been able to transform these two men into the saints
that they became. It was simply God's
grace working through them. God's grace took their sinfulness, their
little-mindedness, their faults and failings, and transformed them into men
after his own heart. How ironic that St. Peter would stand tall against the
critics and nonbelievers of Jesus Christ and fearlessly preach the gospel. He
would never deny Christ again, even when he was led to his own crucifixion. How
fitting that St. Paul would go from persecuting Christians to being persecuted
as one. And what a beautiful witness he gives in his letters, as he waits in
prison for his execution:
I
think it is easy for us to look at the sort of person that St. Peter and St.
Paul became and think: I could never be holy and courageous like
them!! Far too often we forget the fact that the saints, even the great
ones, were human, just like you and me. And we let ourselves off the hook; we
sell ourselves short of the holiness and the service of the Church we are
called to by God. Peter was not
perfect, as a matter of fact he made a lot of mistakes. But he loved the Lord
with all his heart and Christ took that little 'yes' and made him a great
saint. The same could be said of St. Paul, who, by the end of his life was able
to say in Galatians 2:20: "I
have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in
me."
Today
Jesus calls us and asks us, "who
do you say that I am?" He
gives us the opportunity to profess our belief in him and to be transformed
into his saints, just as Peter and Paul were. Like St. Peter we lack faith at
times, we are cowardly, we sin, we question God and sometimes we think that we
know better than God. Like St. Paul and the other disciples, we have much to
learn, we have our past to confront, and sometimes we are selfish. Seeing that
the apostles were men of limited competence and yet they still did so much for
the Church should give confidence to us. If Jesus could use them, he can
certainly use us. With the grace of Christ along with time spent in prayer with
the Lord, we too can grow from weakness to strength and accomplish great things
for God and his kingdom just as Sts. Peter and Paul.
