Saint Peter and Saint Paul

St Leo the Great (pope from 440-461) is very interesting on the subject of today’s feast, the Solemnity of Saint Peter and St Paul.

Leo views salvation very much in terms of Christ’s victory over the devil. In virtue of his incarnation, death, and resurrection, the incarnate Son of God achieves a decisive victory over the devil and all his works – death, sickness, fear, error, idolatry, and sin.

However, although defeated, the devil and his army of demons continue to fight on. They cannot win the war, but they can carry on skirmishing while in retreat, and they can endeavour to bring down with them as many human beings (Christians included) as possible.

In his homily (Sermon 82) on the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, Leo presents Rome as lying at the heart of this ongoing battle between Christ and the demons. Leo argues that all the error, vice, idolatry, and demonic wickedness of the world was (providentially) concentrated in pagan Rome.

Consequently, the washing of Rome in the blood of Peter and Paul and of the other Roman martyrs, together with the establishment of Rome as the centre of orthodox teaching, effected a kind of redemption of Rome.

Rome becomes the scene of an epic battle between Christ and his Church on the one side and the devil and his demons on the other. Through the teaching and martyrdom of Peter and Paul, Christ wins another crushing victory.

The results of this victory – won on the devil’s own home-turf – reverberated around the world. Where she had previously poured out the toxin of demonic error and immorality and idolatry, Rome now pours out the medicine of truth and holiness.

The Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul celebrates of the salvation of Rome – of the washing of Rome in the blood of her first martyrs and in the transformation of what had previously been (to use a modern expression) the global epicentre of the culture of death into the global epicentre of the outpouring of divine life.