follow-up and announcement, the path of Peter and Paul

On the feast of the two apostles, the pontiff presided over mass in the Vatican basilica with the blessing of the pallium of the new archbishops. The Asian Archbishops of Gwangiu, Capiz and Zamboanga were also present. At the Angelus: “The Church needs authentic people, like these two great saints.”

Vatican City () – “Be disciples in following and apostles in the proclamation, take the beauty of the Gospel everywhere, together with all the People of God.” This is the invitation that Pope Francis, on the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, addressed to the new archbishops during the celebration in the Vatican basilica. At the beginning of the mass he blessed the palios, the white woolen cloths decorated with six crosses that symbolize his special bond with the pontiff.

Also attending the celebration at the Vatican were three Asian archbishops who were appointed to their respective sees in recent months: Monsignor Simon Ok Hyun-Jin, Archbishop of Gwangju, South Korea, and Monsignor Victor B. Bendico, Archbishop of Filipinos. Capiz, and Monsignor Julius S. Tonel, Archbishop of Zamboanga. As is the tradition on this day, a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, headed by Archbishop Job, Metropolitan of Pisidia, also participated in the rite.

Precisely the following and the proclamation are the faces of the apostles Peter and Paul – “in love with the Lord, two pillars of the faith of the Church” – on whom Pope Francis focused in his homily. Both were called to give their own answer to the fundamental question that Jesus addresses to his own in the Gospel: “And you, who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16,15).

Pedro’s response was as follows. Even his “beautiful profession of faith – ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’ – impeccable, precise, ‘of catechism’, is the fruit of a path: only after walking with Jesus and behind Jesus for so long, Peter reaches that spiritual maturity that leads him, by sheer grace, to such a clear profession of faith.”

A path that begins by leaving everything, “immediately”, once he hears the invitation of Jesus: “If we can postpone many things in life – the Pope commented -, following Jesus cannot be postponed; there one cannot doubt, “You can’t make excuses. And be careful,” he added, “because some excuses are disguised as spirituality, like when we say ‘I’m not worthy’, ‘I’m not capable’, ‘what can I do?’ This is a cunning of the devil , which robs us of our confidence in God’s grace, making us believe that everything depends on our abilities”.

Paul’s response, for his part, is the proclamation of the Gospel. He tells us that to the question ‘who is Jesus for me?’ It is not answered with an intimate religiosity, which leaves us calm in the face of the concern to bring the Gospel to others. The Apostle teaches us that we grow in faith and in the knowledge of the mystery of Christ the more we announce it and bear witness to it. When we evangelize, we remain evangelized. And this is also necessary for the Church today: to put the announcement in the center. To be a Church that never tires of repeating: ‘For me to live is Christ’ and ‘woe to me if I do not announce the Gospel'”.

“It is beautiful – Francis concluded – to grow as a humble Church that never takes the search for the Lord for granted and that does not find its joy in the things of the world, but in announcing the Gospel to the world, to plant in people’s hearts the question by God Bring the Lord Jesus everywhere, with humility and joy: in our city of Rome, in our families, in relationships and in neighborhoods, in civil society, in the Church, in politics, in the world whole, especially where poverty, degradation and marginalization lurk”.

Following the example of the two great apostles, Francis also returned at noon, and looked out of his study window for the Angelus prayer. In Peter he invited to recognize “the strength of the rock, the reliability of the stone”, but also “the smallness of a simple stone”. “He is not a superman”, he commented, “he is a man like us, who says ‘yes’ to Jesus with generosity in his imperfection. But in him -as in Paul and in all the saints- one sees that it is God who makes us strong with his grace, he unites us with his charity and forgives us with his mercy. And it is with this true humanity that the Spirit forms the Church. Peter and Paul – he added – were authentic people, and we, today more than ever, We need real people.”