In today’s solemnity we are celebrating two living stones who stood firm.\u00a0St. Peter encouraged believers under fire to \u201cCome to him [Jesus]that living stone, rejected by men but in God\u2019s mind chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house\u201d (1 Peter 2:5). \u00a0Jesus gave Peter a special mission in today\u2019s Gospel: \u201cyou are the rock on which I will build my Church”: He was a living stone who put out the nets for a catch after a long fishless night.\u00a0He was the first one to tell Christ he didn\u2019t know what he was getting into by inviting him to follow him, but Christ promised he\u2019d be a fisher of men,\u00a0and after all the trials and suffering, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, in the First Reading\u00a0we see the whole Church praying for him after he was imprisoned.<\/p>\n
St. Paul was so in awe of Peter\u2019s special mission in the Church that he called him Kephas<\/em> (Aramaic for Rock), and told the Christians to come after the apostles to build on that foundation: \u201cyou are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple of the Lord\u201d (Ephesians 2:19-22). Saul was a living stone, but he was set on the wrong foundation, persecuting Christians, and the downfall was soon in coming. When he stopped kicking at Christ\u2019s goad, putting all his talents at the service of the special mission that Christ gave him, he laid the foundation for generations of Christians, even to this day.<\/p>\n We are called to be those living stones who build upon the bedrock of the Church, to form that spiritual edifice, to build up the Church.\u00a0Nobody says it will be easy. It won\u2019t. Peter told Jesus \u201cdepart from me\u201d: he did not feel up to the task. Jesus said \u201cI have prayed for you, and when you come back to yourself, strengthen your brethren.\u201d\u00a0Paul told the Christians at Corinth that it was with \u201cfear and trembling\u201d that he preached the Gospel to them, but as he reminds Timothy in the Second Reading today, \u201cthe Lord stood by me and gave me power.\u201d\u00a0The Holy Spirit is the protagonist, we are just the instruments, he transforms us into living stones, if we let him. Let’s ask for the\u00a0grace today through the intercession of Sts. Peter and Paul to be living stones in the Church.<\/p>\n Readings:\u00a0Acts 12:1\u201311;\u00a0Psalm 34:2\u20139;\u00a02 Timothy 4:6\u20138, 17\u201318;\u00a0Matthew 16:13\u201319.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In today’s solemnity we are celebrating two living stones who stood firm.\u00a0St. Peter encouraged believers under fire to \u201cCome to him [Jesus]that living stone, rejected by men but in God\u2019s mind chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house\u201d (1 Peter 2:5). \u00a0Jesus gave Peter a special mission in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,57],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ordinary-time","tag-solemnity-of-saints-peter-and-paul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-7e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}