On Saturday, June 29, the Orthodox Church honors the memory of Saints Peter and Paul, the First Apostles. The following day, June 30, the Church celebrates the Synagogue of the Holy Twelve Apostles.
The Life of the Apostle Peter
Peter he came from Bethsaida in Galilee and he was the son of Jonah and brother of the apostle Andrew Protocletos. O Peter and Andreas were fishermen at Lake Gennesaret. When Jesus arrived at the lake of Gennesaret, he found the two brothers casting the nets. Immediately after the call, they left their hammocks and families and followed him.
We know this Pedro was married, because Christ healed his mother-in-law. It is quite possible that his wife was not alive when Christ called him to the apostolic office.
Peter he was present at the wedding at Cana and immediately after this marriage he settled with Jesus and other disciples in Capernaum.
There is not much news about Peter’s story after the Resurrection. In the history of the early Church and again Peter takes the lead in the first administrative act of the Apostles, when he instructed a joint assembly of the faithful to elect Judas Iscariot’s replacement.
Her day of Pentecost Again Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles and spoke to the gathered crowd so that others would believe and be baptized.
Then the Peter healed a lame man in the Temple, being with John, he spoke for the second time to the crowd. This reason had the consequence that he was taken with John to the conference. The Jews and even the Sadducees they arrested Peter and John a second time and imprisoned them, only to be miraculously released.
The Life of the Apostle Paul
Saint Paul, born as Saul, was an apostle and author of about half of the books of the New Testament. He was one of the most important figures in early Christianity, a defender of the universality of Jesus’ teachings. That is why he received the name “Apostle of the Nations”.
Other than the New Testament, there are no other reliable sources on Paul’s life.
As he himself says, he was born in Tarsus, Cilicia, of Jewish parents from the tribe of Benjamin (Rm 16:1; Phil 3:5). His father was a Roman citizen, which may mean that he came from the upper strata of the Cilician population and may have been Pharisee in religious preferences.
If we take this into account at Prax. 7:58, during the stoning of the first martyr deacon Stephen, he is mentioned as a “young man,” while in Phil. 9, which was written around late 61 to early 62 AD. (or at least 52-55 AD), he calls himself “ambassador”, it is possible to calculate that his year of birth was somewhere between 5-15 AD.
His education and upbringing were strictly rabbinical and Jewish.
His style, his theological method, and his use of Scripture present Paul as a stern but chaste rabbi, knowledgeable in all the controversies of Jewish Law and a skillful wielder of rabbinic dialectics. He later confesses that he was very diligent and even “more zealous of his father’s traditions” and distinguished himself among his peers.
Strabo informs us that Tarsus in Paul’s day was superior to Athens and Alexandria in literature, and was the residence of many Stoic philosophers. In this city Paul learned the Greek language and came into contact with the thought and life of Hellenism.