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Bishop's Homily for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter & Paul

June 29, 2025

(Stock Studio 4477 / Shutterstock.com)

Homily of the Most Reverend Larry Silva, Bishop of Honolulu
[Immaculate Conception Church, Lihue]

Sometimes it is very difficult to serve the Lord.  We would like to think otherwise, but the Scriptures give us too much evidence that serving the Lord Jesus can bring many challenges and much suffering.

Here we see Peter, the one who was so afraid of suffering and death that he denied the Lord the night before he died.  Now, however, he is so bold in preaching the Lord Jesus that he is thrown in prison, perhaps awaiting the same fate that Herod dealt out to the Apostle James – death!  Yet the angel of the Lord amazingly frees him from prison, making the chains drop off his wrists, opening iron doors and gates, and keeping the many guards assigned to him in a stupor, such that none of them noticed their charge escaping from prison.  In a short time, we see him preaching once again, doing the very thing that got him in trouble in the first place.  He suffered many more trials, and finally was crucified on the Vatican hill in Rome, asking to be crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die in the same manner that Jesus had died.  How could Peter have gone back for so much punishment and persecution?  It was because he was crazy in love with Jesus!  He knew Jesus was risen from the dead and was with him always, and that deep abiding love caused him to suffer with joy!  And we celebrate him today.

Paul, too, as we know, began as the Pharisee Saul, actively pursuing and persecuting anyone who believed what he considered a dangerous doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Then, on the road to Damascus, he actually encountered the risen Jesus, who spoke directly to him.  From that moment on, he was so smitten with love of Jesus that he went to the ends of the earth to proclaim his Name.  He suffered many more persecutions, physical, emotional and mental – but he did so with joy until the very end when he was beheaded in Rome.  How could he endure such rejection and persecution so joyfully?  He was crazy in love with Jesus.

Jesus gave Peter the keys to unlock the kingdom, to bind and loose, and that key is to fall in love with Jesus, to proclaim him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  It was that real love that unlocked the heart of Paul and so many others who have given their lives for Jesus.

We are often tempted to simply practice our religion – to learn the doctrines of the Church, to participate in its liturgies, even to engage in the many services it offers to people of all ages, to the homeless, to immigrants, to the sick, and to so many others. If that is all there is, I do not think we will be around very long.  When hardships come and the storms of life, we will be washed away from the Church.  But if we build our faith on the one solid rock that is the Lord Jesus himself, risen from the dead and always with us, then, like Peter and Paul, we will be able to endure more than we can imagine – and to do so with great joy!

We have the opportunity to fall in love with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, every time we come here to encounter him in the Eucharist.  He is as truly present here to us as he was to Peter when he appeared after his resurrection in the Upper Room and on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus is as truly present here in the Eucharist as he was to Saul when he became a blinding light that would change his life – and even his name – forever.  As I celebrate 50 years as a priest this year, I thank God for the privilege that is given to every priest: to make present the risen Lord Jesus so that more and more people can fall in love with him.  Once we do, then we will long to go out to our families, friends, schoolmates, work colleagues and neighbors to proclaim his love and to invite them to come and know the risen Lord Jesus, too.  When they see us joyfully facing all the burdens of life – and even seeking out opportunities to share this love of Jesus when we know it will bring us ridicule, rejection or even persecution – they will wonder what is the key to all this freedom.  And we pray, that they, too, will come to know the risen Lord and to fall in love with him, to encounter his living presence in the Eucharist, and to go out to share his love whether convenient or inconvenient.

These sterling examples of the Apostles Peter and Paul are celebrated so that they can strengthen us all to unlock this radical love of the risen Jesus, not only for ourselves, but for all we meet.  They show us that persecution, rejection, and even death are not the last word, but that the eternal life granted by Jesus Christ is a prize worth running for.  It will not guarantee that we will not suffer, but it assures us that no suffering can hold us bound because we are filled with joy at being in love with the risen Lord Jesus.