Who is your rock in life, your foundation? Who inspires you? Jesus is your protection, your strength, your guide. Build his church.

Consider that Saints Peter and Paul, taken together, are the church—that is, they embody two significant aspects of church which incorporate the whole and cannot be separated without losing something vital. Those aspects might be defined as action and reason. Peter is a doer, and Paul is a thinker. One trait isn't much good without the other.

When Jesus arrived in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “What are people saying about who the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” He pressed them, “And how about you? Who do you say I am?”

The apostles Peter and Paul suffered their share of persecution for their faith. What is interesting was their reaction: They didn’t retaliate—Peter became a rock rather than tossing one back. They simply had faith, endured, trusted in God—and kept on building the church.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

Saints Peter and Paul were both rescued—literally—one from prison and the other from prosecution, at least for a while. They illustrate the deliverance the psalmist testifies to for those believers who call on the Lord, as indeed they did: “I have kept the faith”; “you are the Christ.”

It is important to note that Saints Peter and Paul, the two men we call the “pillars of the church,” were both flawed and gifted human beings.

The Church is not a community of the perfect, but a community of sinners, obliged to recognize their need for God’s love, their need to be purified through the cross of Jesus Christ. —Pope Benedict XVI, 2012 Feast of Saints Peter & Paul