Don Bosco Philippines South Province

courtesy of professorjohnston.com

Many commentaries today would speak of the differences and similarities between the two great apostles we celebrate today. St Peter held the primacy of Jesus’ Church while St Paul brought it to ends of the world. The former they say belonged to the margins of society while the latter enjoyed the center of it all. The beautiful thing about these two lives, however, is not their beginnings nor their end. It is not even just their mission, sufferings, and martyrdom that makes them great. These two saints are great because Jesus chose them and made them great.

It is wonderful to think that both actually come from the margins of human existence, one from obscurity while the other from blindness. Yet Jesus, despite their limitations, personally chose them and sent them and thus made them apostles. From the margins of poverty in fact and in spirit, He brought them to the center of His story for them to continue in deed and writing the very Gospel we now enjoy.

This is a great lesson for us Christians today. We who often complain of our limits and inadequacies, seeing ourselves more of victims than opportunities must face a greater reality. When we allow ourselves to listen as Jesus calls us to be sent we would realize that it is not our worth that matters but that the Master has made us worthy for His mission.

Simon the obscure has become the Rock in whom the Church is built, the primate among the princes now visible head of the Church. Paul whose mind was blinded by his ideas has become the light that brought the Gospel to far recesses of the world. It is only in the hands of God that we come who we were meant to be.

Happy Solemnity!

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