29 June 2020
Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
In a letter sent from Rome on June 5, 1552, St. Ignatius of Loyola explains to Francis Borgia the reasons why Ignatius had a deep desire to do everything that he could to oppose the desire of Emperor Charles V (whose temporal authority Ignatius recognized and respected) and Pope Julius III (whose spiritual authority Ignatius recognized and submitted to) to make Francis a cardinal. In that letter, Ignatius declares: “there would be no contradiction in its being God’s will for me to take this course while others take a different one and the dignity be conferred upon you. The same divine Spirit could move me to this course for one set of reasons and move others to the opposite for different ones.” In other words, Ignatius did not doubt that God could give good Christians opposing desires, and that God could make use of these conflicting desires in order to work His will in the world. Ignatius does not doubt that his desire comes from God. But just because the desire comes from God does not mean that God intends for the thing desired to come about. Ignatius himself shows great indifference in this letter when he states that it might be God’s wish that Francis become a cardinal, and he trusts that if it is, God will bring this about. But Ignatius knows that he himself would be disobedient to God’s will if he did not do all in his power to try to prevent Francis Borgia from becoming a cardinal. And yet, he realizes that others might be disobedient to God’s will if they did not just as vehemently work to bring the opposite about.
Today’s feast day testifies to the legitimate and even necessary tension between the charisms in the Church. Saint Paul would have been disobedient to the Holy Spirit if he had simply accepted Peter’s retreat to the conservative religious practices of his Jewish Christian brethren instead of obeying the Spirit’s promptings to transform this practice as Christianity spread among the Gentiles. Saint Paul was correct to challenge Peter, as we see in Galatians 3. But at the same time, Peter should not resign his post or simply let Paul run roughshod. Instead, Peter continues to have the definitive word, a word which silences the assembly and to whose authority Paul submits (Acts 15). The Pauline and Petrine charisms exist in tension; both are necessary and, in obedience to God, both Peter and Paul need to simultaneously be convinced of what God calls him to and defer in a proper way to God’s work in the other. This is the irreducibility of the Catholic Church, in which there is just one Spirit, but many charisms. Let us ask for the grace to know God’s will for each of us and to live it out perfectly, while also recognizing that those who resist us from within the tension of the Church may also be accomplishing God’s will, perhaps even more perfectly than we are.