The Beginnings of Spiritual Conversations: Saints Peter and Paul 2025

The Beginnings of Spiritual Conversations:

Saints Peter and Paul 2025 

June 29, 2025

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Acts 12:1-11; Psalm 34; 2 Timothy 4:6-18; Matthew 16:13-19

 

This feast day is important to Jesuits worldwide because it is the day that Ignatius of Loyola’s fever broke and he began his recovery. Ignatius was wounded in May 1521 at the battle against the French in Pamplona, Spain. A cannonball shattered his leg, and, because of his valor, the French brought him to his castle in Loyola in the Basque region to recuperate. His legs have been ill set, and the doctors found it necessary to break his legs again to heal properly. A violent fever set in, and the doctors declared that he would not live beyond a few days. He received the last rites on this feast day expecting that he would not survive the night. Ignatius always had a great devotion to Peter and confidently implored his intercession. During the night, in a dream, he thought he saw the Apostle touch him and cure him. When he awaked he found himself out of danger; his pains left him, and his strength began to return, so that he saw this recovery as miraculous. The story of the pilgrim Ignatius was just beginning.

 

The story of Peter and Paul were beginnings as well. Peter was chosen to build the church in memory of Jesus, and Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles and the church’s first theologian. Ignatius offered a type of friendship with Christ that made the faith accessible to the ordinary person. When the family of Ignatius visited him in his sickroom, they noticed a new character forming within Ignatius. He began to speak to them of the things of God, and he began to have a defining hallmark of Ignatian ministry: spiritual conversations. He realized these skillful conversations helped souls. The more he helped souls, the more he felt within himself an impulse to serve the Lord. 

 

This feast celebrates the relationship between Peter and Paul, which was built on having sacred conversations with one another. Through their conversations, the saints were able to make the faith a universal one with the criterion for membership in this new community as belief in the Lord Jesus. Anyone who called upon the name of Jesus was treated with mercy and welcome into the community as brother, sister, and friend. Anyone who had an encounter with the Risen Jesus was accepted as an equal and could share a meal of friendship and communion.

 

We need this feast today because the spiritual conversations between Peter and Paul, and the ones Ignatius advocated for, are needed more than ever. We can have difficult but necessary conversations. It begins with a desire to help souls. We must first see people who are suffering and then be filled with a desire to lessen their pain and to provide for them a way forward. We need people today who are going to show us that there is a path to future healing, reconciliation, and wholeness. We must believe it is possible. Peter and Paul argued and listened to one another and were able to bring the Gentiles and Jews together into one expression of faith. They learned how to respect and hear each other’s points and to be bolstered by stories of genuine faith. Ignatius learned how to listen to stories to heal and reform the Church and to show people they could be in friendship with a loving, caring God. Today, we need our everyday saints to show us what is possible through spiritual conversations and trust in one another. The way forward is bright if we take these radical steps of collegiality and friendship. People are seeking a way forward, and they need your saintly work of helping souls today. Great work is done through our everyday work of helping another person suffer less.

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (Genesis 18) Abraham and the men who had visited him by the Terebinth of Mamre set out from there and looked down toward Sodom; Abraham was walking with them, to see them on their way. The LORD reflected: "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, now that he is to become a great and populous nation, and all the nations of the earth are to find blessing in him?

 

Tuesday: (Genesis 19) As dawn was breaking, the angels urged Lot on, saying, "On your way! Take with you your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of Sodom." When he hesitated, the men, by the LORD's mercy, seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters and led them to safety outside the city.

 

Wednesday: (Genesis 21) Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. Isaac grew, and on the day of the child's weaning Abraham held a great feast. Sarah noticed the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham playing with her son Isaac; so she demanded of Abraham: "Drive out that slave and her son!

 

Thursday: (Ephesians 2) You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.

 

Friday (Genesis 23) The span of Sarah's life was one hundred and twenty-seven years. She died in Kiriatharba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham performed the customary mourning rites for her. Then he left the side of his dead one and addressed the Hittites: "Although I am a resident alien among you, sell me from your holdings a piece of property for a burial ground, that I may bury my dead wife."

 

Saturday (Genesis 27) When Isaac was so old that his eyesight had failed him, he called his older son Esau and said to him, "Son!" "Yes father!" he replied. Isaac then said, "As you can see, I am so old that I may now die at any time. Take your gear, therefore–your quiver and bow–and go out into the country to hunt some game for me.

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Matthew 8) A scribe approached and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”

 

Tuesday: (Matthew 8) As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us!  We are perishing!"

 

Wednesday (Matthew 8) When Jesus came to the territory of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him. They were so savage that no one could travel by that road. They cried out, "What have you to do with us, Son of God?
Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?"

 

Thursday (John 20) Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But Thomas said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."

 

Friday (Matthew 9) As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, ""Follow me."" And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples.

 

Saturday (Matthew 9) The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?

 

Saints of the Week

 

June 29: Peter and Paul, apostles (first century) are lumped together for a feast day because of their extreme importance to the early and contemporary church. Upon Peter's faith was the church built; Paul's efforts to bring Gentiles into the faith and to lay out a moral code was important for successive generations. It is right that they are joined together as their work is one, but with two prongs. For Jesuits, this is a day that Ignatius began to recover from his illness after the wounds he sustained at Pamplona. It marked a turning point in his recovery.

 

June 30: The First Holy Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church (c. 64) were martyrs under Nero's persecution in 64. Nero reacted to the great fire in Rome by falsely accusing Christians of setting it. While no one believed Nero's assertions, Christians were humiliated and condemned to death in horrible ways. This day always follows the feast of the martyrs, Sts. Peter and Paul.

 

July 1: Junipero Serra, priest, was a Franciscan missionary who founded missions in Baja and traveled north to California starting in 1768. The Franciscans established the missions during the suppression of the Jesuits. San Diego, San Francisco, and Santa Clara are among the most famous. Serra’s statue is in the U.S. Capitol to represent California.

 

July 2: Bernard Realino, John Francis Regis, Francis Jerome, S.J. are known for their preaching skills that drew many to the faith, including many French Hugeunots. Regis and his companions preached Catholic doctrine to children and assisted many struck by the plague in Frances. Regis University in Denver, Colorado is named after John Regis. 

 

July 3: Thomas, apostle, is thought to have been an apostle to India and Pakistan and he is best remembered as the one who “doubted” the resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels, however, testify to his faithfulness to Jesus during his ministry. The name, Thomas, stands for “twin,” but no mention is made of his twin’s identity.

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• June 29, 1880. In France the law of spoliation, which was passed at the end of March, came into effect and all the Jesuit Houses and Colleges were suppressed. 
• June 30, 1829. The opening of the Twenty-first General Congregation of the order, which elected Fr. John Roothan as General. 
• July 1, 1556. The beginning of St Ignatius's last illness. He saw his three great desires fulfilled: confirmation of the Institute, papal approval of the Spiritual Exercises, and acceptance of the Constitutions by the whole Society. 
• July 2, 1928. The Missouri Province was divided into the Missouri Province and the Chicago Province. In 1955 there would be a further subdivision: Missouri divided into Missouri and Wisconsin; Chicago divided into Chicago and Detroit. 
• July 3, 1580. Queen Elizabeth I issued a statute forbidding all Jesuits to enter England. 
• July 4, 1648. The martyrdom in Canada of Anthony Daniel who was shot with arrows and thrown into flames by the Iroquois. 
• July 5, 1592. The arrest of Fr. Robert Southwell at Uxenden Manor, the house of Mr Bellamy. Tortured and then transferred to the Tower, he remained there for two and a half years.