St. Peter and Paul’s Fasting Time

- a way to deepen faith and confession -

St. Peter and Paul’s Lent is the period in which Christians are invited to meditate on Christian suffering as a testimony of Christ as the Son of God.

There are two essential things that we must keep in mind when thinking about the Holy Apostles and their work: (1) their election and calling by Christ God; (2) confession of faith in Christ as the Son of God.

The call to know God is a work that begins with God and with His help. Christ is the author and finisher of our faith and salvation. He is the One who awakens faith in us; it is He who nourishes it with the power of His grace and the illumination of understanding which He gives us. Human faith is also needed in this way. He who wants to come after me must take up his cross and follow me - says Christ. Christ invites us to follow his path. An anonymous author commenting on the Holy Scriptures says that God rewards our intention to stay with Him, to want to do what is due from God's inspiration and word.

Christ became incarnate and dwelt among men for the purpose of taking upon His shoulders the weight of the redemption and restoration of human nature. During the three years of Christ the Savior's preaching, the Holy Apostles are watching the proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven, the healings, the resurrections, and the words of great power that He proclaims. The Holy Apostles are chosen and called by Christ Himself to be witnesses of this work. They are called to take part in the fulfillment of God's redemptive plan.

The most important vocation of the Holy Apostles is that of witnessing the saving work of the Lord Christ, of the fact that He is the Son of God who came for us and for our salvation. The apostolic vocation has the role of distinguishing between Christ and other inspired people or workers for God. If others such as prophets, seers, St. John the Baptist are men inspired by God and part of the history of salvation inspired by divine providence, Christ is the One through whom it began, continues and will be completed. He is the One who opened a new way for us, our way as people to deification and union with God, to winning the Kingdom of heaven. Without Christ nothing of what was done could have been fulfilled.

The call belongs to God, the answer belongs to the faithful man. The call is made through the word, but this is not just any word, but the word of God, the seed that, falling into the good soil, bears fruit for eternal life.

The faith professed by the Holy Apostles is the foundation of the Church. The Church is founded on this rock of faith, as the Savior St. Peter the Apostle says. If the Church is founded on this faith, not even the gates of hell can overcome it, because it is the faith that deifies and nothing that is divine can be overcome by the evil one.

We still live here on earth mysteriously the presence of God and His Kingdom in the Holy Liturgy and in the Holy Mysteries. They make us feel concretely present here and now the work of God. It makes us feel that even if we are far from God through sin and weaknesses, we are close through his work and grace, through his providence that guides us, through the boundless love we feel he bears us.

Let's use this period of the Fast of the Holy Apostles as an opportunity to deepen our knowledge of God and our own, to proceed to inner cleansing, to work for growing in faith and confession because without a strong inner faith, the confession cannot be done properly.