Sts. Peter and Paul

The first two readings yesterday for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul struck me with an insight I wasn't expecting.

The Acts reading recounted Peter's miraculous delivery from prison; when he was expecting the worst, he found himself set free in a highly unexpected way. It teaches us about the power of intercessory prayer, and helps us see that sometimes the answer we need comes in ways we don't anticipate. There isn't any particular indication that Peter was expecting to escape his expected fate; based on what had already been done to James he must have been preparing to meet a similar fate. Yet the believers of the community did not cease praying for an answer, and there was no denying the divine source of the one provided.

St. Paul's second letter to Timothy has a very different tone. Apparently its Pauline authorship is debated among scholars, but nonetheless, the focus of the subject's trust in God is very different from the first reading. In this case, St. Paul's reliance on the providence of God is not so much about being delivered from his imprisonment and pending fate, but about being strengthened in the midst of his circumstances. It is more important to St. Paul at this juncture that he remain faithful than that he be delivered from judgment and death. This is rooted in his profound trust in God for his eternal destination and his profound appreciation to Jesus Christ for providing his salvation and his ministry.

It seems to me that we mostly pray for the first kind of deliverance, when our focus should be more on the second. If we truly trust in God for eternity, then we will know much more peace about our circumstances. Sometimes God will provide for those needs as we desire, while at others our lives will give testimony to God's greatness in ways other than we might choose for ourselves or our loved ones. God will sometimes use remarkable means to deliver us through our circumstances, but that deliverance will only sometimes be an actual changing of those circumstances, and far more rarely in clearly miraculous ways.