+ Homily for the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul, Sunday 28 June 2026
Dom Guéranger, who founded our French mother house of Solesmes in 1833, loved Rome. He visited it many times. He even once stayed in Rome for more than one year at a time when he was working at establishing our Congregation. He loved the city and its churches. He venerated its basilicas and its catacombs. He was probably one the men of his time who knew its history and its monuments best.
As a legacy of his spirit, we keep somewhere in the attic gigantic engravings of vistas of the eternal city, the equivalent of our modern drone images, where you can identify the hills, major monuments, and most Christian churches. Dom Guéranger had Rome always under the eyes and wanted the same for his disciples. Mainly he taught us – and many others – to look at Rome with the eyes of faith; to consider it as a city and at the same time a symbol. To the eyes of faith, Rome was for Dom Guéranger the icon of a mystery and the incarnation of a principle: the icon of the Church, in which the mystery of the Incarnation is continued and diffused among all peoples of the world till the end of times; and the incarnation of the principle of faith on which this Church is built: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! You are Peter, on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.
Dom Guéranger belonged to generations who looked to Rome beyond national borders. They were called ultramontanes, those who look beyond and over the mountains. It was good to be a Christian in France, but it was not enough: one had to be really Catholic, that is to say universal. One had to feel the blood of the apostles and the first martyrs giving ever renewed youth to one’s life of faith. One had to go to Rome, beyond centuries of partial estrangement and oblivion. One had to reconnect with the centre and the heart. Once you had knelt at the tombs of the Apostles and received the blessing of their successors, the popes, you could go back to your own beloved fatherland and there fight the battles of the true faith.
The Gospel preached by the Apostles is universal. It cannot be enclosed and, as it were, hemmed into geographical or cultural boundaries, be these of parish, diocese, country, or even continent. It spreads from the two cities which God’s Providence blessed with a special vocation: Jerusalem, the city where Christ was crucified and rose from the dead, and Rome, the city which was baptised by the blood of Peter and Paul and came to represent an anticipation of the New Jerusalem.
For all its immense symbolic meaning, Rome is a church, one diocese among many that make up the one Catholic Church. The pope is only, if I may say so, its bishop. All bishops are his brothers. They form one college, one body which as such inherits the mission and charisms of the Twelve. At the same time, just as Peter was “the first” and received as a personal mission and a personal charism, the Pope is the first of the bishops with a special mission and charism for expounding truth and fostering charity.
Truth and charity come from above. They come from God. They are the gift of God’s revelation and salvation. They come with a divine authority which reaches us through the mediation of this divine institution managed by human beings under the guidance of the Holy Spirit which we call the Church.
For Dom Guéranger, one of the places where this authority of the Holy Spirit present in the Church was the most tangible was the liturgy. When he was a very young priest, Dom Guéranger discovered the Roman Missal, the use of which had been discontinued in most dioceses of France in its time. He was struck by the way the Church of Rome prayed to God. It was perfectly consonant with the Fathers of the Church and the great Councils he had thoroughly studied. It was a correct, harmonious and pious expression of the truth. There one could feel the authority of Christ speaking through Peter, and the authority of the Church praying to the Father in perfect communion with her High Priest Jesus Christ. To celebrate the Liturgy according to the Roman books and to sing the Chant of the Roman Church was a powerful way of being at Rome. One benefits thus from the charism of truth in the exposition of the faith given to Peter’s successors and fells immediately part of the communion in charity which is the essence of the Church.
What today’s feast celebrate is neither an romanticised Rome nor an idealised Church. We give thanks for two men who were giants in the faith whilst remaining surrounded by weakness and totally relying on God’s grace acting in them, preaching in them and, finally, suffering in them. We thank God for the amazing gift of the Church and rejoice to belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic community Christ founded. Quoting our Bishop Philip, we can say that “Like Peter and Paul, we too are ordinary folk, called to an extraordinary mission. Let’s ask the Lord to grant us the faith of Peter and the energy of Paul. Indeed, may each one of us copy their passionate love for Jesus – “Yes, Lord, you know I love you” – and their burning desire to spread the Faith.”