Homily on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul
Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
Church of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
La Crosse, Wisconsin
29 June 2025
Acts 12, 1-11
Ps 34, 2-3. 4-5. 6-7. 8-9
2 Tim 4, 6-8. 17-18
Mt 16, 13-19
Homily
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I am most deeply grateful to all who have gathered today in this holy place to offer thanksgiving to God for fifty years of priestly life and ministry granted to me. I am offering the Holy Mass today in thanksgiving but including in my prayers the intentions that you all have in your hearts as you come here, making a little pilgrimage to meet Our Lord through the loving care of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I express a particular word of thanks to the Reverend Deacons and also to my brother priests who are present, and, in a most particular way, to Father Edward Nemeth, Executive Director of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and to Father Hildebrand Garceau, Superior of the Norbertine Fathers who have the spiritual care of the pilgrims and Rector of the Shrine Church. I am deeply honored by the presence of three brother Bishops: our beloved Bishop of La Crosse, Bishop Gerard Battersby; Archbishop Leonard Blair, Archbishop Emeritus of Hartford in Connecticut, who has been a dear friend of mine since we began studies of theology together in 1971 in Rome; and Bishop Robert Baker, Bishop Emeritus of Birmingham in Alabama, who has been a friend for almost my entire priestly life and who, in a very particular way, assisted Mother Angelica during the last years of her life in the wonderful apostolate of Eternal Word Television Network. My heartfelt thanks to all of you.
Today, we gratefully remember Saint Peter who “foremost in confessing the faith … established the early Church from the remnant of Israel,”[1] and Saint Paul, who was “[the faith’s] outstanding preacher … the master and teacher of the Gentiles.”[2] We celebrate their heroic fidelity to Our Risen Lord and to the mission they personally and directly received from Him, even unto a martyr’s death. We rejoice in Our Risen Lord’s immeasurable and unceasing love for us in the Church, for, through the Apostles and their successors – Pope Leo XIV, Successor of Saint Peter, and the Bishops, Successors of the Apostles – , He, in an unbroken line, shepherds us, the Father’s flock, in our time, as He, according to His promise, will continue to do until He returns in glory on the Last Day.
In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear the words of Saint Peter after his miraculous delivery by an angel from Herod Agrippa I’s imprisonment on the eve before his trial and certain condemnation to death: “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”[3] Fortified with the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit, poured forth into his heart from the glorious-pierced Heart of Our Risen Lord on Pentecost Sunday, Saint Peter who, out of fear had denied Our Lord during His Passion, now, in the cruelest of persecutions, had full confidence in Our Lord’s presence with Him through the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He was sustained in his heroic trust by the prayers of the flock he was shepherding. In fact, the same divinely-inspired text assures us that Saint Peter was helped by the prayers of the flock whom he was shepherding, when it declares “earnest prayer for him was made to God by the Church.”[4] Thus, Our Lord safeguarded Saint Peter to carry out his essential ministry in the Church until its consummation by martyrdom under the Roman Emperor Nero around the year 67.
In a similar manner, Saint Paul, as he was approaching death, wrote to Saint Timothy, expressing his unshaken faith, notwithstanding all that he had suffered to bring Our Lord, Divine Truth and Love, to the whole inhabited world.[5] After his miraculous conversion from the life of a relentless persecutor of the Church to the life of a fearless and tireless teacher and preacher of the Catholic faith, Saint Paul, united to Saint Peter in his profession of faith in Christ, became, by God’s grace, truly the Apostle to all the Nations. To our day, the Apostolic teaching of Saint Paul gives inspiration and direction to the Church in her essentially missionary character. Let us listen to his words to Saint Timothy:
For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.[6]
His Apostolic ministry was consummated by the martyrdom of beheading, also under the Roman Emperor Nero, around the same time as Saint Peter’s crucifixion.
In recalling the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, we ask what was the source of their heroic fidelity to Our Risen Lord. The answer is found in today’s Gospel in the response of Saint Peter to Our Lord’s question: “But who do you say that I am?”[7] Saint Peter immediately responded: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”[8] The truth that Jesus Christ is truly God the Son Incarnate, the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, the Savior or the world, King of Heaven and Earth, which the world stubbornly denied and continues to deny, sustained Saints Peter and Paul throughout their earthly journey and brought them, through a martyr’s death, to eternal life.
In response to Saint Peter’s profession of faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ at Caesarea Philippi, Our Lord declared:
Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”[9]
Faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son Incarnate, is the foundation of our life in Christ in the Church. It is supernatural. The preternatural forces of Satan and his cohorts can cause us great suffering but will never prevail against the truth of the Faith. Through Saint Peter and the other Apostles, including Saint Paul, Our Risen Lord, alive for us in the Church, by the manifold gifts of His grace, shepherds us on earthly pilgrimage and brings us safely home with Him, seated at the right hand of the Father in glory, in the Kingdom of Heaven. How profoundly and endlessly grateful we are for the gift of life in Christ handed on to us through Apostolic Tradition: faith and the worship of God “in spirit and truth,”[10] and their fruit, a good and holy life!
Today, our gratitude for our life in Christ, faithfully handed down to us through Apostolic Tradition, has a particular point of reference for the Church and for me personally. Fifty years ago, during the Holy Year of 1975, on this day, almost to the hour, Pope Saint Paul VI ordained me, together with 358 other deacons from throughout the universal Church, to the Holy Priesthood. Through his Apostolic ministry as Successor of Saint Peter, he sacramentally conformed me to Christ, Head and Shepherd of the flock, so that I might act in His person, exercising His pastoral charity on behalf of souls to the glory of God and for their eternal salvation. Celebrating a Jubilee Year of the Redemptive Incarnation, the Roman Pontiff desired to manifest, in an extraordinary manner, the grace of Christ the Good Shepherd at work through His priests missioned in every part of the world but all one in the profession of faith of Saint Peter at Caesarea Philippi, in the faith taught so luminously by Saint Paul.
I still vividly recall, as if were yesterday, the figure of the Roman Pontiff, with evident love of the flock in his care, ordaining 359 deacons whom, at the beginning of his homily on the occasion, he identified as “the pentecostal composition of this assembly of deacons.”[11] At the time and over the years, I have been asked whether I found priestly ordination, together with so many other deacons, impersonal. Not at all. The grace of Christ, the love of Christ – acting through His Vicar on earth – consecrating those whom Christ was calling to be “fishers of men”[12] – , permeated the entire rite which, even though it took several hours, was marked by all the beauty and intimacy of so sacred an act of Our Risen Lord.
Completing fifty years of priestly life and ministry, my heart is filled with gratitude for what Christ has accomplished through me, a little brother. It all has been His work, for I have hoped to be His priestly instrument. In his homily on the day of the ordination, Pope Saint Paul VI, instructed us who were to be ordained:
Brothers and sons, let us never forget this most special relationship that priestly ordination creates between us and God: we become vehicles of the divine action. “Holy Orders,” says Saint Thomas, “involves principally the conferring of a power” (Suppl. 34, 2 ad 2), which in itself transcends human possibility, and which can only derive from God and be entrusted to the ministry of man. Think of the power “of consecrating, offering, administering the Body and Blood of him, our Saviour, and of remitting and retaining sins” (DS 1754). If this is so, and it is so, our mind must never cease to be full of wonderment; we must be absorbed in the contemplation of the mystery of our ordination, as we shall never sufficiently grasp what the Lord has accomplished within us. Our whole life will not suffice to exhaust the meditation of the inexhaustible wealth of the great things accomplished by the power and goodness of God. With the Blessed Virgin we shall always say: Fecit mihi magna qui potens est: “The Almighty has done great things for me” (Lk 1:49).[13]
Let us all thank Our Lord today for the Holy Priesthood and for the immeasurable and unceasing love He showers upon us through His priests.
I am especially grateful to the Virgin Mother of God, Mother of Priests, who has lovingly and tirelessly drawn me to her Divine Son, and, with her, to so many saints who have both inspired me and interceded for me over my now quite long life, and especially during my years of priestly ministry. I will be forever grateful, too, to all those – living and deceased – who have helped me to know Christ’s call to the Holy Priesthood, to present myself for ordination, and to carry out the priestly mission, to be the pastoral charity of Christ to all whom I have been sent to serve: my good parents and my family, priests and consecrated religious, friends, and the many faithful whom I have come to know and who have loved me as a priest. I express my particular gratitude to my brother priests who have helped me to be faithful, generous, and pure in my priestly love, and to the priests who were co-workers with me as a Bishop.
A native son of the Diocese of La Crosse, I express the deepest gratitude for the early human, intellectual, and spiritual formation received at Holy Cross Seminary. May God reward abundantly all who made possible the excellence imparted to young men at Holy Cross Seminary. May Bishop John Patrick Treacy who founded the Seminary and Bishop Frederick William Freking who called me to Holy Orders through the hands of Pope Saint Paul VI enjoy the eternal reward of their Apostolic labors.
In our gratitude today for the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul and for the gift of fifty years of priestly life given to me, let us pray for those whom Christ is now calling to be “fishers of men,” our seminarians and those who are being called but have not yet entered the seminary. Conscious of the many challenges which a young man faces today in responding to the priestly vocation, let us encourage those in whom we see the signs of a priestly vocation and let us sustain our good seminarians as they respond to Christ’s call. As a seminarian for thirteen years and a priest for fifty years, I am witness to the importance of your prayers, encouragement, and support.
Finally, I ask you please to continue to pray for me that I may always be faithful, generous, and pure in pastoral charity on behalf of the souls for whom I have been ordained. After the Papal Mass for the Ordination of Priests on June 29, 1975, Pope Saint Paul VI gave to each of the newly-ordained priests a small leather volume containing the New Testament and Psalter, together with an Appendix of Prayers. In the Appendix of Prayers, there is a brief invocation for the priest to make after offering the Holy Mass: “O Good Jesus, grant that I may be a priest after Your Heart.”[14] From the day of my ordination, this invocation has been my daily prayer, not just after the offering of the Holy Mass but throughout the day. When I was called to be consecrated a Bishop, I chose as my episcopal motto the last words of the invocation: “Secundum Cor Tuum”: “After Your Heart.” Please pray that my priestly heart may rest always more completely and securely in the glorious-pierced Heart of Christ the Eternal High Priest.
Christ, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father, now descends to make sacramentally present on the altar of this holy place His Sacrifice on Calvary and to nourish us with the fruit of the Sacrifice: the Heavenly Bread which is His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Under the care and guidance of the Virgin Mother of God, Our Lady of Guadalupe, of Saints Peter and Paul, and of all the saints, let us unite our hearts to His Eucharistic Heart, offering ourselves in pure and selfless love to God the Father and for love of our neighbor, especially our neighbor who is in most need. May God grant long life to Pope Leo XIV, Successor of Saint Peter, and may He grant to us many good and holy priests and Bishops.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] “… hic princeps fidei confitendae … reliquiis Israel instituens Ecclesiam primitivam.” “Prefatio, Die 29 iunii, Ss. Petri et Pauli, Apostolorum, Solemnitas, Ad Missam in die,” Missale Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum, Editio Typica Tertio (In Civitate Vaticana: Typis Vaticanis, 2008), p. 782. [Herafter: Missale Romanum]. English translation: “Preface, June 29, Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, Solemnity, At the Mass during the Day,” The Roman Missal renewed by Decree of the Most Holy Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, Third Typical Edition, tr. International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (New Jersey: Catholic Book Publishing Corp., 2011), p. 740. [Hereafter: Missale Romanum Eng].
[2] “… ille intellegendae clarus assertor … magister et doctor gentium vocandarum.” Missale Romanum, p. 782. English translation: Missale Romanum Eng, p. 740.
[3] Acts 12, 11.
[4] Acts 12, 5.
[5] Cf. 2 Cor 11, 23-28.
[6] 2 Tim 4, 6-8.
[7] Mt 16, 15.
[8] Mt 16, 16.
[9] Mt 16, 17-19.
[10] Jn 4, 24.
[11] “… la composizione pentecostale di questa assemblea di Diaconi.” “L’Omelia di Paolo VI durante la celebrazione per il XII Anniversario dell’Incoronazione. La Missione del sacerdozio nel mondo contemporaneo,” L’Osservatore Romano, 30 Giugno-1 Luglio 1975, p. 1. [Hereafter: OR]. English translation: “Paul VI ordains 359 to the Priesthood: The World is waiting for you,” L’Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English, 10 July 1975, p. 1. [Hereafter: OREng].
[12] Mt 4, 19; Mk 1, 17.
[13] “Non dimentichiamo mai, fratelli e figli, questo rapporto specialissimo che l’ordinazione sacerdotale instaura fra noi e Dio: noi diventiamo veicolo dell’azione divina. « L’ordine, dice S. Tommaso, comporta principalmente il conferimento di una potestà » (Suppl. 34, 2 ad 2), che per sé è trascendente l’umana possibilità, e che solo da Dio può derivare ed essere affidata al ministero dell’uomo. Pensate alla potestà « di consacrare, di offrire, di amministrare il Corpo e il Sangue di Lui, il nostro Salvatore, e di rimettere o di ritenere i peccati » ! (Denz. Sch. 1764). Se così è, ed è così, la meraviglia non dovrà più venir meno nei nostri spiriti ; noi dovremo essere assorbiti dalla contemplazione del mistero della nostra ordinazione, come non mai abbastanza coscienti di ciò che il Signore ha operato in noi. Tutta la nostra vita non sarà mai sufficiente per esaurire la meditazione dell’inesauribile ricchezza delle cose grandi compiute dalla potenza e dalla bontà di Dio. Con la Madonna diremo sempre: « Fecit mihi magna qui potens est », il Signore ha operato in me cose grandi ! (Lc 1, 49).” OR, pp. 1-2. English translation, OREng, p. 2.
[14] “O bone Iesu, fac ut sim sacérdos secúndum Cor tuum.” Novum Testamentum et Psalterium iuxta Novae Vulgatae editionis textum cum Indice analytico-alphabetico et Appendice Precum (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1974), p. 1017. English translation by author.