Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

Friends in Christ,

Welcome to our weekly Sunday update. This Sunday is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Saint Peter is asked by Our Lord who is the Son of Man, and Simon Peter confesses that He is the Messiah, “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:18). Our Lord rewards this response with a declaration that upon Peter rests the foundation of the Church that He is establishing. “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father, who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17-19). Little did Simon Peter know that some thirty years later, his own burial site in Rome would literally become the foundation for universal Church, which carries on Peter’s apostolic work through his (Saint Peter’s) many successors unto the current Bishop of Rome today, Pope Leo XIV.

This feast is foundational to the liturgical year that it supersedes the normal Sunday liturgy for this date (Third Sunday after Pentecost).




Calendar of Special Observances

Celebrations are those listed in the Roman Missal of 1962.

DAY, DATE – FEAST (CLASS)

Sunday, June 29 – Ss. Peter and Paul, Apostles (I) – Third Sunday after Pentecost

Monday, June 30 – The Commemoration of St. Paul, Apostle (III)

Tuesday, July 1 – The Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ (I)

Wednesday, July 2 – The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (II)

Thursday, July 3 – St. Irenaeus, Bishop & Martyr (III) – Jesus Christ the High Priest (III)

Friday, July 4 – Sacred Heart of Jesus (III) – Commemoration of All Holy Popes (IV) – Feria (IV)

Saturday, July 5 – St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria, Confessor (III) – Immaculate Heart of Mary (III)


Feasts of Saints Peter and Paul

The links provided below can be used to download printable copies of the Proper Prayers for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul with English or Spanish translation, followed by commentary on the Third Sunday after Pentecost (reduced to a commemoration due to Sunday’s feast day) by Dr. Michael P. Foley.



Latin Mass Schedule: Sundays

Charlotte Area Latin Masses

  • 11:30 a.m., Saint Thomas Aquinas

  • 12:30 p.m., Saint Ann

Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses

  • 8:30 a.m., Saint John the Baptist (Tryon)

  • 1:00 p.m., Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock)

  • 1:30 p.m., Our Lady of Grace (Greensboro)

Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses

  • 12:00 p.m., Prince of Peace (Taylors SC)

  • 1:00 p.m., Our Lady of the Lake (Chapin SC)

Note: Travelers are urged to consult parish websites or offices for up-to-date information regarding possible changes in the regular schedule of Sunday Mass times.


Latin Mass Schedule: Weekdays (June 30 - July 5)

Charlotte Area Latin Masses

  • Feast of the Precious Blood, Tuesday July 1 (see announcement below)

  • Saint Ann – Wednesday, 6:00 p.m.

  • Saint Thomas Aquinas – Thursday, 7:00 p.m.

  • Saint Ann – Friday, 7:00 a.m.

  • Saint Thomas Aquinas - First Saturday Latin Mass, 10:00 a.m. (followed by blessing of religious objects in the narthex)

Other Diocese of Charlotte Latin Masses

  • Our Lady of the Mountains (Highlands) – Thursday, 9:30 a.m.

  • Saint John the Baptist (Tryon) – Friday, 8:30 a.m.

  • Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock) – Friday, 9:30 a.m.

  • Saint John the Baptist (Tryon) – First Saturday, 8:30 a.m.

  • Church of the Epiphany (Blowing Rock) – First Saturday, 10:00 a.m.

Diocese of Charleston Latin Masses

  • Prince of Peace (Taylors SC) – No daily Mass this summer (starting June 2)

Note: Note: The summer Mass schedule for Prince of Peace parish went into effect Monday June 2nd and according to the bulletin there are no daily Latin Masses at Prince of Peace Monday-Saturday this summer.

Travelers are advised to contact parish offices to confirm weekday and Saturday Mass times, since local schedules are sometimes subject to change without notice, especially on or around holidays, holy days of obligation and other special feast days.


Feast of the Precious Blood, Tuesday July 1

The following are announced Latin Masses for the traditional Feast of the Precious Blood. If more Masses are scheduled, we will include them in future updates.

  • Our Lady of Grace (Greensboro) – 6:30 p.m.

  • Our Lady of the Lake (Chapin) – 6:30 p.m.


Announcements

Friday July 4 Latin Mass Change – Due to the July 4th holiday, the Friday 7:00 a.m. Latin Mass at Saint Ann parish on July 4 will be moved to 9:00 a.m. (it will be a Latin Mass).

SAVE THE DATE: Sunday July 13, 12:30 p.m. - Welcome Back Fr. Jones Celebration – The Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society will be organizing a potluck after the Saint Ann parish 12:30 p.m. Latin Mass to welcome back Fr. Jones, who is returning to Saint Ann to serve as parochial vicar and chaplain for the Latin Mass chapel. More details in the week ahead.

Paraclete Press in Massachusetts is a distributor of books, CDs, and chant materials from Benedictine Monks of the Abbey in Solesmes (France), which was established by the great liturgist Dom Prosper Guéranger. He, as many recall, revived Gregorian Chant for the modern era and generated renewed interest in the liturgy. To browse through some of their selections please click on this link.

Daily Holy Face Chaplet for Sacred Liturgy (perpetual novena) – It has been recommended to all friends of the sacred liturgy in the diocese to consider continually praying the powerful Holy Face chaplet, under the banner of Our Lady of the Holy Name. To pray the chaplet, please see this link.

Cardinal Burke’s Prayer for Pope Leo XIV – His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke has released a prayer for Pope Leo XIV. Please consider praying this daily for the Holy Father as he leads the Church.

Prayer for Pope Leo XIV: Vicar of Christ on Earth and Shepherd of the Universal Church

O Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of the Lord of Heaven and of Earth, Our Lady of Guadalupe, guide and protect the Roman Pontiff, Pope Leo XIV. Through your intercession, may he receive in abundance the grace of the Successor of Saint Peter: the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity of our Bishops and of all our brothers and sisters in the Mystical Body of your Divine Son. Unite Pope Leo’s heart to your Immaculate Heart, leading him to rest his heart ever more securely in the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, so that he may confirm us in the Catholic faith, in the worship of God in spirit and truth, and in a good and holy Christian life.

In the tumult of the present time, keep Pope Leo securely within the hollow of your mantle, in the crossing of your arms, protecting him from Satan, the Father of Lies, and from every evil spirit. Implore Our Lord to grant him, in particular, the wisdom and courage to be a true Shepherd of the Church throughout the world. With you, I place all my trust in Christ, the Good Shepherd, Who alone is our help and salvation. Amen.

Heart of Jesus, formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mother, have mercy upon us!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Queen of the Apostles, pray for us!

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us!

Pope Saint Leo the Great, pray for us!

PDF copies can be accessed at these links: [English] [Español] [Latin]


Holy Face Devotions

Prayers of Reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus are offered each week at the following churches on the indicated days:

  • St. James (Concord) – Monday, 10-10:30 a.m. (in the cry room)

  • St. Mark – Tuesday, 4:45 p.m. (special time for Tuesday July 1)

  • St. Thomas Aquinas – Tuesday, 6:00 a.m.

  • St. Ann – Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. (following 7:00 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)

  • St. Michael the Archangel (Gastonia) – Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. (following 8:00 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)

  • St. Vincent de Paul – Tuesday, 8:40 a.m.

  • Holy Spirit (Denver) – Tuesday, 10-11:00 a.m. (following the 9:15 a.m. Novus Ordo Mass)

  • Saint Elizabeth of the Hill Country (Boone) – Third Tuesday, at 6:45 p.m. after Mass in the Youth Room

  • St. John the Baptist (Tryon) - First Saturday, 9:30 a.m. (after 8:30 a.m Latin Mass)

Note: Days and times may be subject to change due to holidays.

“Jesus, Your ineffable image is the star which guides my steps. Ah, You know, Your sweet Face is for me Heaven on earth” (from Canticle to the Holy Face by Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, the 19th century Discalced Carmelite nun who took the name in religion, Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face).


Latin Mass and Liturgical News


Saints and Special Observances

Saints Peter and Paul have been connected by popular devotion since the early days of Christianity. Evidence of this combined veneration has been found in writings on the walls of the catacombs in Rome. The two saints have been honored on the same date, June 29th, since at least as early as the fourth century. In his History of the Church, written in the early decades of that century, Eusebius noted that Peter and Paul had been martyred in Rome “at the same time” during the Neronian persecution. Writing near the end of the same century, St. Jerome went further, claiming in De Viris Illustribus that the two had been put to death on the same day.

Saint Irenaeus (whose feast is this Wednesday July 3), in his second-century work, Adversus Haereses, credited Peter and Paul with having been the co-founders of the Church at Rome. They might aptly be called co-founders of the Christian religion, provided we keep in mind that Christ Himself is the source and substance of Christianity. Certainly, the two were united in their zeal to spread the salvific message of Christ crucified and resurrected from the dead; but they could hardly have differed more widely in terms of their personalities and the circumstances of their lives.

Saint Peter was almost certainly the older of the two. Given the name Simon when he was born in the Galilean town of Capernaum, he was the son of a fisherman named Jonah and worked on his father’s boats, plying the waters of the inland Sea of Galilee, until Jesus called him to be a fisher of men. It is likely he had little or no formal education and may have been illiterate in spite of the fact that two canonical letters in the New Testament carry his name. He is mentioned by name so many times in the Gospels, and in the Acts of the Apostles, that we are able to derive from the things he said and did a fully developed portrait of the man. Impetuous at times, headstrong at others, subject to strong emotions and never afraid to speak his mind, he was fiercely loyal to Our Lord and the first among His followers to recognize Jesus as the “Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).

Arising from somnolence in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night Jesus was betrayed, his anger aroused, he drew his sword to strike out in violence. But as the events of that night unfolded, he withdrew in fear and then succumbed to bitter remorse at his failure even to acknowledge his association with the prisoner. In an emotional meeting with the resurrected Jesus, again on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Peter purged his triple denial of Our Lord with a threefold assertion of his love. Following the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the one-time fisherman proved to be a bold, and sometimes imperious, leader of the burgeoning community of believers: the first Bishop of Rome, he became the Rock upon which the Church was founded.

While Saint Peter was likely somewhat older than Jesus, Saint Paul was probably a few years younger than Our Lord. Unlike the untutored son of a Galilean fisherman who would one day become the first Bishop of Rome, Paul (born Saul) was the son of a Roman citizen in the Hellenized Mediterranean coastal city of Tarsus. His family was able to send him to Jerusalem to be educated in the rabbinical school of the famous scholar of the Judaic Law, Gamaliel. Paul emerged from his studies a rigid defender of Jewish orthodoxy dedicated to exposing those not strictly observant with regard to the Law. His zeal was such that he took a particular interest in ferreting out and calling to account followers of the emerging new Way espoused by those who proclaimed Jesus to be the long-expected Messiah. His conversion was a hard case. Unlike Peter who cast aside his nets immediately to follow when Jesus called, Paul had to be knocked off his high horse. It was on the road to Damascus, where he was going to arrest adherents of the heterodox cult, that Paul was struck down as by a bolt of lightning out of the blue and heard a voice demanding, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4).

Blinded by the blast of light, Paul was led into the city by those who accompanied him on his mission to the Syrian city. He remained unable to see for three days until the Lord sent a disciple named Ananias to cure him and see that he was baptized.

Unlike his more impulsive counterpart, Simon Peter, who was sometimes inclined to act first and weigh the consequences later, Paul tended to think things through, following the frequently circuitous path of his own reasoning to its logical conclusion. He used the power of his thought to win untold converts to the Faith. As the author of half the books in the New Testament, he has continued to bring new believers into the fold even into our own time. He was also an indefatigable traveler who narrowly escaped death at the hands of men and the elements of nature on several occasions. Like Peter, he made it to Rome eventually, but only after decades spent traversing the world to carry the Good News of Christianity to every nation.

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The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus was established as an obligatory feast of the universal Church by Pope Pius IX in 1856, but the liturgical celebration had its origin in an encounter between St. Margaret Mary Alocoque and Our Lord on June 16, 1675, which was described in Dom Prosper Guéranger’s beautiful treatment of this solemnity in his work, The Liturgical Year. [Feast of the Sacred Heart]

Yet, there is more to the meaning of this feast as Father William Rock noted in an article, expounding on how both the Feasts of Corpus Christi and Sacred Heart are, in a way, a joyful recapitulation, or look back, at the Easter cycle. [Joy that One is Born into the World]


Closing Commentary

In closing, we offer an excerpt from the commentary on the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, Apostles in The Liturgical Year of Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB, followed by a link to the full text. (Note: in a future update, we will continue last week’s commentary, “On Holy Communion, During the Time After Pentecost”).


June 29 - St. Peter and St. Paul, Apostles

Since the terrible persecution of the year 64, Rome had become for Peter a sojourn fraught with peril, and he remembered how his Master had said to him, when appointing him Shepherd of both lambs and sheep: Follow thou me. The Apostle, therefore, awaited the day when he must mingle his blood with that of so many thousands of Christians, whom he had initiated into the faith, and whose Father he truly was. But before quitting earth, Peter must triumph over Simon the Magician, his base antagonist. This heresiarch did not content himself with seducing souls by his perverse doctrines; he sought even to mimic Peter in the prodigies operated by him. So he proclaimed that on a certain day, he would fly in the air. The report of this novelty quickly spread through Rome, and the people were full of the prospect of such a marvellous sight. If we are to believe Dion Chrysostom, Nero seems even to have entertained at his court this wonderful personage, who pledged himself to soar aloft in mid-air. More than that, the emperor would even with his own presence honor this rare sight. The imperial lodge was reared upon the Via Sacra, where the scene was to be enacted. But cruel for the impostor did this deception prove. “Scarce had this Icarus begun to poise his flight,” says Suetonius, “than he fell close to Nero’s lodge which was bathed in his blood.” The gravest writers of Christian antiquity are unanimous in attributing to the prayer of Peter this humiliation inflicted on the Samaritan juggler in the very midst of Rome, where he had dared to set himself up as the rival of Christ’s Vicar.

~

The filial devotedness of the Christians of Rome took alarm, and they implored Saint Peter to elude the danger for a while, by instant flight. “Although he would have much preferred to suffer,” says Saint Ambrose, Peter set out along the Appian Way. Just as he reached the Capuan gate, Christ suddenly presented himself, seemingly about to enter the city. “Lord, whither goest thou?” cried out the Apostle. “To Rome,” Christ replied, “to be there crucified again.” The disciple understood his Master; he at once retraced his steps, having now no thought but to await his hour of martyrdom. [June 29 -- St. Peter and St. Paul, Apostles]