Commontide
Liturgical Color: Red
The 4th Sunday after Trinity
Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Apostles and Martyrs
Red Letter Day
Peter and Paul are kept together on June 29, the day tradition assigns to their martyrdom in Rome under Nero. Peter was the Galilean fisherman whom Jesus named the Rock, the leader of the Twelve and the first to confess him as the Christ; Paul was the Pharisee who hunted the church until the risen Christ stopped him on the Damascus road and made him the apostle to the Gentiles. Two more different men could hardly be imagined, and the church remembers them on one day because between them they carried the whole gospel, to the Jew and to the Gentile, and both gave their lives for it in the same city.
Peter (Simon bar Jonah) was a fisherman from Bethsaida, called with his brother Andrew to follow Jesus (Mark 1:16–18). He was the first to confess Jesus as the Christ (Mark 8:29), was present at the Transfiguration and Gethsemane, denied Jesus three times during the Passion, and was the first male disciple to see the risen Lord (1 Corinthians 15:5; Luke 24:34). After Pentecost, Peter led the Jerusalem church, preached the first public sermon (Acts 2), opened the Gospel to the Gentiles through the conversion of Cornelius (Acts 10), and spoke decisively at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:7–11). Paul's letter to the Galatians records Peter in Antioch (Galatians 2:11–14). The New Testament does not narrate his death.
Paul (Saul of Tarsus) was a Pharisee educated under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3) who zealously persecuted the early Church until his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus road (Acts 9:1–19; Galatians 1:13–17). After years of preparation, he undertook three major missionary journeys across Asia Minor and Greece, establishing churches and writing the letters that make up the largest single authorial corpus in the New Testament: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon (the undisputed letters), plus Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles (debated authorship). Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome (Acts 28:30–31).
Traditionally, both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome under the Emperor Nero (reigned 54–68), Peter by crucifixion (inverted, at his own request) and Paul by beheading (as a Roman citizen, exempt from crucifixion). The tradition of their Roman martyrdom is early, multiply attested, and widely accepted by modern scholarship. Clement of Rome, writing from Rome to Corinth around 96, refers to Peter and Paul as exemplary martyrs of 'our own generation.' Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Romans around 107–115, refers to Peter and Paul as having given instructions 'as apostles' to the Roman church. By the mid-2nd century, a shrine to Peter existed on the Vatican Hill.