Feast of Saints Peter and Paul 2025

Today we celebrate the beautiful feast of St. Peter and Paul.

These are the figures tied to some of the most moving stories of vocation and

faithful life as the apostles of Christ.

A man who risked everything to follow him, to become his messengers and the

proclaimers of the good news of Jesus Christ and his resurrection.

And they also are powerful examples of extraordinary love for Christ.

And today's readings and this solemn day turn our attention inward,

reminding us that we need continual conversion toward God.

That drawing closer to Him is a journey without end, obviously.

And this is our mission, to keep converting, to keep allowing God to transform

our hearts, to become better Christians and at the same time to be witnesses for others.

Proclaiming the truth of the faith and the call to conversion.

So I would like to reflect on how we can experience conversion in our lives

and arrive at that moment when we

realize that beyond all things that seem important and meaningful in life,

the goals we pursue and the tasks that fill our days,

our entire life must be focused on a single purpose, and that is, of course.

Salvation, the salvation of our soul.

And I think that's what was in mind of St. Peter and Paul and other apostles,

that they risked their lives because they knew how dangerous it is to stray

away from the truth and stray away from Christ.

And this purpose, the purpose of salvation deeply stirs my heart and constantly

accompanies me in prayer.

And often I travel to Poland by plane usually, especially when I'm in the airport or in the airplane.

I look around all the people, so many cultures, personalities,

each person with a different mission, different talents, desires of the heart, and dreams.

And I always ask myself, will these people be saved?

Will each one of them, at the end of their journey,

make that one most important decision, not waste their lives living only for

self-certification, for successes that someone might remember or perhaps not,

will that person at the end of the road find themselves in the heart of God?

Will they save their souls?

While I was in Poland, I had many conversations. I want to bring three of them here in this homily.

I was deeply moved by those conversations my heart was moved to sadness and to joy as well.

So I have many friends who are following

Catholics far from the church and no longer practice their faith and these conversations

naturally drifted toward the reasons for their departure from the church The

most frequently repeated reasons were scandals,

bad examples of the priests,

different controversies, involvement of the church in politics.

And witnesses of people that failed to become true witnesses of Christ,

and conversion into the truth.

In those conversations, I tried to listen, to engage, to explain, to defend the church.

But at the end, I asked myself an important question, because sometimes you

have just a one shot with a person.

You might not see this person again.

And I was asking myself, if I could share only one thing with them,

if I could maybe ask one simple question that

touches the very core of our faith and that meaning

of life what would that be what would that question be and I think that the

question would be do you believe that you will be saved at the end but it's

a difficult question it's uh it has a lot of consequences that we might not want to live out and.

But in today's readings, I see kind of three points I would like to reflect on.

Each of them speaks to how we are called to conversion, how we must fight for

our salvation and what essential elements help us to stay on the path that leads to eternal life.

And there are probably many, many different and more, but those maybe will be

helpful for you today, for us today.

So the first of these is the moment in the gospel when Christ is asked by his

apostles, who do people say that the Son of Man is?

And I believe it's a foundational question.

If our answer is wrong, it completely diverts us from the path to salvation.

Many times in my conversations, again, I spoke to people who know what I do.

And who speak kindly about Jesus.

They saw him as a virtuous man, great teachings, full of wisdom.

They're applicable. Their life is better. And that's it.

But they are not Catholics. They don't practice the faith. They don't receive

the Eucharist. And it's true.

Everything is true what they said. But they don't recognize Christ as God. Thank you.

But only as a virtuous man, wise man, someone who set a good example and taught

us how to live, but we do not acknowledge him as God.

Then we are, who are we really following, right? The virtuous man.

Where are we going following that man if he is not God?

Are we chasing after a version of Jesus that we ourselves have crafted to suit

our needs, or are we truly ready to walk the real path of conversion, as radical as St.

Peter and St. Paul did and other apostles, and give our whole life to discovering

that truth and reaching the very end of the journey where salvation awaits us?

Or do we choose other substitutes?

I once had a conversation during my trip to Poland with a friend from my city,

Kielce, who had sadly gone through a very difficult divorce.

And he had never really practiced faith. He would never go to the church.

He lacked a relationship with God and he lacked that spiritual strength that

might have helped him to go or prevent from that to happen.

So after the divorce, it was very difficult for him to recover, obviously.

He was searching for the answers. He turned to Buddhism, then other religions

and various spiritual paths, which as he himself admitted,

helped him somehow, somewhat, to get through the darkest time in his life.

But he ended up on a path built on accepting everything as long as it brought

him inner peace and made him feel okay.

It felt like he was trying to convince himself and me that everything was truly fine.

However, without conversion to God, there is no relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist.

And without that relationship, there is no true peace.

I don't believe that. We should not believe that there is a true peace outside of the Eucharist.

And that's where I see a real tragedy when we stop recognizing Christ as God.

We begin searching for substitutes to fill the void in our lives.

And it seems to me that as we drift from Christ, our lives begin little by little to lose their meaning.

When we begin to drift away from Christ, step by step we start to walk off the

road that truly leads to the most important goal of our life, salvation.

We reach a point where we are willing to accept anything, anything,

to maintain a sense of peace.

But we want real peace, not sense of peace.

That's why it's so important to truly know who Christ is. He's not just an inspiring

example to follow, who leads us to the fullness of truth and to salvation.

So the second one is the essential element we find in today's readings is attentiveness

to voice of God and openness to his inspiration.

In the first reading, I have to admit, I think we read the wrong reading,

but let me, yeah, I think there was one for the day. and then I prepared my homily for the Sunday.

So I apologize for that.

But nevertheless, we hear about the messenger that leads St.

Peter outside of the prison and gives him freedom.

And so this moment kind of reminds us that we too must remain watchful for God's

call because the Lord can enter our lives at any moment,

rescuing us from spiritual numbness or from distress, from inner emptiness.

One of my friends shared with me an extraordinary story of her conversion.

She was going through a very difficult time in life.

Her marriage was on the verge of collapse, constant arguments,

bitterness, and lack of respect from her husband.

Even though they had two children and outwardly appeared to live a stable,

peaceful life with no financial worries or any sort of problems.

Their relationship was full of tension and suffering. And one day in the evening,

while they were returning from vacation, she and her husband got into a serious fight in the car.

They were shouting, blaming each other.

And suddenly, as she told me

she heard a woman's voice very

clearly in her left ear she believes

it was Mary the voice said only

one sentence don't turn she

said the voice was so striking that it gave

her chills and she second later and just

second later an animal ran out onto

the road she froze she didn't

swerve didn't steer away the animal

hit the car but no one was hurt i

think in normal situation circumstances she would she

said she was a very uh aggressive kind of driver and

very reacting very quickly on the road and that

was something unusual that that she did because she listened that voice and

of course from that moment she said everything changed she believed that Jesus

had saved her life because he wanted to save not only her soul, but her whole family.

And that event was the beginning of a deep conversion.

She gave up contraception. Soon after, she gave birth to two more children.

At first, she began attending mass once a week.

Then more often, she started listening to spiritual talks,

praying the rosary, learning about faith you know

that moment of faith when you're just crazy catholic you want to

know everything right about your faith so her

entire life became centered on god

as she spoke about it she radiated deep peace and joy i could tell but as but

as is it so often the case that Pat wasn't without suffering because her husband didn't convert,

didn't take that event as something coming from God.

So that became her personal cross, one she still carries today,

and she prays for him, but she knows it's not easy.

And in her story, we see something very similar to the life of St.

Paul, for example, where.

When the time for his conversion came, he gave everything to God, risking it all.

His reputation, his beliefs, his social standing, completely reorienting his

life towards different direction, toward God.

And this is what true conversion looks like. We are not afraid of the consequences

because we know this is the road we must walk.

And it seems to me that it's in such moments of life that everything boils down

to one thing. I want to be saved.

This is the third aspect of to have a goal, this one goal in your life,

to be saved. It should not be any other that triumphs that one.

And this is exactly the goal that St. Paul speaks of in today's second reading

when he says, I have competed well.

I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

Each one of us wants to finish the spiritual race, the race for the salvation of our soul.

We want to give our all to reach the finish line because that is what truly

matters and nothing should discourage us from achieving that goal.

That's why we strive and come back to confessions to receive the mercy of God.

And on the way back from Poland, I ran into another friend at the airport, probably by mistake.

We hadn't seen each other for a long time, and he was shocked to learn that I was a priest.

In 10 minutes, literally, he went through all things that bothered him about

the Catholic Church and how he can stand this institution.

But at the end, he said, but I respect you and respect what you do and your

priesthood. And I'm like, honestly, that makes no sense.

How can you, someone who says he hates the church, still respects a priest,

someone who represents the church, defends it, gives his life for it,

and stands before the people each day in its name.

But, you know, it's hard to understand. At the end of our conversation,

he tried to justify himself.

It's almost like funny to see that, but it's true.

He says, you know, I pray, you know, when I'm biking, I pray,

and I'm trying to be a good person.

But the problem with that is that being a good person is good,

right? It's a good start, but it's not enough.

Like being a good person for what? Why would you have to be or desire to be a good person?

Because God gives us a specific path, a covenant, whose source and summit is

centered on the Eucharist.

It is the Eucharist that brings salvation, but we must prepare ourselves for

it through our conversion, our examination of conscience, through confession,

by entering a state of sanctifying grace.

Receiving the body of Christ is a grace that gives eternal life.

Whoever receives it has eternal life.

There were many conversations with my friends that I could have approached differently.

I know that, and I always take a feedback from them.

Sometimes I softened the message too much, avoided the topic of salvation.

Trying to answer the difficult questions, trying to protect the church from

being distorted by the bad examples of priests, saying that there are also good examples of priests.

But if we don't speak clearly that salvation of the soul is the most important

thing and instead focus only on whatever someone is a good person or a bad person,

then we are falling short.

We must care about the salvation of our own soul, first of all,

and the souls of those we meet.

St. Peter and Paul were apostles of conversion.

They preached the salvation of souls. They risked their lives.

They were completely dedicated to reaching

as many people as possible and telling them

the truth that salvation exists it's possible

it's available but so

does damnation and every soul is

at risk unless it chooses christ

and i want to be that kind of priest uh one who preaches conversion who speaks

the truth without fear of the consequences because the most significant consequence

would be staying silent and allowing someone's soul to perish in spiritual death.

So today I ask each of us, how am I caring for my salvation?

How am I nurturing my conversion?

Do I preach conversion to others?

So let us pray today for the fullness of grace, for the grace of conversion,

for the courage to proclaim God's Word, that God may transform our hearts daily

and reach the hearts of others through us and bring them to the Eucharistic table.