Saints Peter and Paul

Today the two whom Christianity has always kept paired are celebrated together, even though they were very different and even quarreled with each other. Peter’s name was Simon and he was a fisherman from Capernaum. He was the first to be called, and in the Gospels he is the one who gets it wrong most often: he walks on the water and sinks, he promises never to abandon Jesus and denies him three times in the same night. In the garden he draws a sword and cuts off a man’s ear — and from the fact that it was the right ear, many scholars deduce he was left-handed. He is also the one who, after all this, is asked three times, “Do you love me?” Paul had never met Jesus and had persecuted the Christians. He was struck down on the road to Damascus, and from then on he carried the message beyond the Jewish world, all around the Mediterranean. His letters are the oldest Christian texts we have, older than the Gospels. They clashed in Antioch, and Paul writes about it without sweetening anything: he opposed him to his face. The question was whether Christians who had come from paganism had to observe the Jewish law, and the answer that came out of it changed history. Tradition has them both dying in Rome under Nero: Peter crucified, Paul beheaded — because he was a Roman citizen, and a citizen could not be crucified. If your name is Peter or Paul, today is your name day.