Acts 25:13-21 / John 21:15-19
At the entrance of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Queen Street (Singapore), there are two statues on each side.
One is that of St. Peter and he is seated on a chair and holding two big keys on one hand.
Those keys symbolize what Jesus said to Peter about giving him the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 16:19)
The other statue is that of St. Paul and he is holding a sword and a closed book.
The book represents the epistles that he wrote for the early Christian communities and the sword represents the instrument of his martyrdom.
Sts. Peter and Paul are undoubtedly the two great saints of the Church.
Yet we would also know that they were also the two great failures of the Church; great enough to be called epic failures.
St. Peter denied Christ in His darkest hour, and three times at that; St. Paul, when he was still Saul, persecuted Christ in the Christians, and his infamous moment was when he witnessed the martyrdom of St. Stephen and he totally approved of it.
Yet, in today's readings, we heard how they turned around with the grace of God and bore witness to Christ.
God's grace was all that was needed to turn them around. God's grace is also all that we would ever need to turn our lives back to God.
Let us pray fervently for this grace as we prepare for the feast of Pentecost.