Among the earliest of the commemorative festivals of the Christian church is the commemoration of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul dating from the middle of the third century. The early church had the tradition that these preeminent apostles were martyred on the same day during the Neronian persecution, which ended in 68 AD with Nero's ignominious suicide. We don't know that Peter and Paul shared a day of martyrdom, but they were certainly closely linked in their work and ministry and their eventual arrival in Rome, the capital of the Mediterranean world at the time. It is only with the rise of the medieval papacy that Paul's significance at Rome was overshadowed by Peter's for reasons of papal authority. Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome (440-461) preached a sermon for the Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul in which he explicitly links their mutual authority by declining to make any distinction between them. Their twin authority in the church may have given rise to the presumption that they also shared the day of their martyrdom.

Nero's was the first official Roman corporal persecution of which we are aware. It was intended to deflect blame from the increasingly unpopular Emperor by casting it upon a misunderstood religious minority that worshiped a foreign deity. Nero made a horrifying spectacle of this persecution, including covering his victims with pitch and setting them fire using them as tiki lights at garden parties in the Domus Aurea, the Golden Palace, his lavish residence built upon the ashes of fire-blackened Rome. Yet this lavish cruelty could not overwhelm the faith and hope of these pre-eminent missionaries of the church. For their Lord Jesus was the one who promised that the very gates of hell would never prevail against His church. Peter and Paul must have seen the very gates of hell as they watched the lurid flames consuming their brothers and sisters.

What could Nero have been thinking? How could he have exterminated the faith of the church, given as it is by God Himself? What made him think he could kill with suffering those whose Lord is the suffering Servant? Slaughter cannot terminate the church founded on the slaughter of the Lamb of God on the altar of the cross of Golgotha. Death could not threaten those whose life had been returned to them by the One who defeated death by dying. Life could not be taken from those in whom life had been implanted through baptism; dying with Christ and rising to newness of life. The thing that Nero thought would terminate the church's life became the very thing that grew the church triumphant and the church militant. Those who received the golden crown of life through martyrdom ( Rev 2:10) became full inheritors of the promised heavenly kingdom. The church militant was watered by the blood of the martyrs which spattered the killing grounds of the cruel men who try to devour the Lord's patrimony with the sword, instead fertilizing His church. The Lord's great promise was being fulfilled for Peter and Paul in their martyrdom: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him" ( Jn 12:24-26). Christ was having His way with their lives, giving the fullness of life at the moment of death.

The Lord of life does the same for all His saints. This is one of the reasons we Christians still commemorate these days to celebrate the great martyrs like Peter and Paul. They are leading lights of the church and among the firstfruits of martyrdom. In our trials and troubles, our griefs and sufferings the Lord still builds His church. He martyrs us that we might become witnesses to His life, death, and resurrection; martyred saints along with St. Peter and St. Paul.