On the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul

Thank you to Brother Michael

Christ the Savior, our true God, when He wished to entrust the world to His chief disciples and Apostles Peter and Paul, so that they might preach in it His Gospel and by their preaching might instruct those who believed in Him in the true knowledge of God and the keeping of His commandments, and so that they might be merciful to sinners and the more easily forgive the transgressions of those who repent – by His divine and unattainable decrees allowed that Peter should renounce Him three times and Paul should persecute and devastate His Church. And after Peter’s true repentance and Paul’s miraculous coming to believe in Christ, both of these Holy Apostles, inasmuch as they had known in themselves the weakness of human nature, were therefore most merciful, in the likeness of Christ the Lord, to those who transgressed and truly repented; and as they bore the burden of everyone on themselves, so also they inspired all to this, saying: Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2)

Saint Paisius Velichkovksy