Daily Reflection Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

Have you noticed how the word 'legacy' seems to be having a moment in the sun these days? Colleges are being critiqued for their legacy admissions practices. Non-profit organizations make a pitch for us to become legacy donors. Estate planning and plan-your-funeral services entice us with the question, "What will be your legacy?" Legacy.com is now one of the top-ten visited internet websites with its compendium of over 100 million funeral guest book entries. 

In season and out, one of the delights for me as a Catholic has been the invitation in the rhythm of the liturgical calendar to claim with intentionality the legacy of our fore-mothers-and-fathers -- a call to celebrate anew the foundations upon which we build as people of faith in our own time and place. Today, with solemnity and joy, we mark the legacy of leadership in the early Church, our heritage of the witness of Peter and Paul, a recognition of Church authority and our call to mission in equal measure.

 A Galilean fisherman, brother, and husband, Peter was one of the first apostles to be called by Christ, and he was witness to many of the most significant events in the Gospel story. A man blessed with both bluster and bravado -- weakness and fears and failures, forgiven and with a zealous determination and love expressed in service and self-sacrifice -- his heroic sanctity reminds us that the Gospel is carried forward on the firm foundation of faith and grace. Paul, once a leader with a zeal of his own in the persecution of the church, becomes the Apostle to the Gentiles, with a fervor in missionary discipleship that can only come from and be sustained by a transformation into a new creation, where, if God is for us, not one thing in all creation -- life, death, angels, principalities, things present or to come -- can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

There is a poignancy in this Solemnity pairing. Pillars of the early church, Peter and Paul were united in life, witness, and death. Tradition has it that both were martyred by Nero in Rome-- one crucified and one beheaded -- in the first flush of religious persecution there (somewhere between 64-68 CE). Peter is buried on Vatican Hill, his grave now marked by St. Peter's Basilica, Paul now resting beneath the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. 

Our Feast Day celebration reminds us that our legacy is not, ultimately, in resume or title, in estate planning, or even in memory alone. We stand now as the most recent fruit of our family tree of faith. We are all 'obituaries in the making.' But what will be our legacy? It is a good question after all.