Saint of the Day – 30 June – The Commemoration of St Paul. Apostle and Martyr.

The joint commemoration of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, is one of the most ancient customs of the Roman Church, attested already in the oldest surviving Roman Liturgical Calendar, the Depositio Martyrum, written in 336. A verse of the Hymn, Apostolorum Passio, an authentic work of St Ambrose († 397) and still used in the Ambrosian liturgy, says that “the thick crowds make their way through the circuit of so great a city; the feast of the sacred Martyrs is celebrated on three streets.” These “three streets” are the via Cornelia, the main street running up to and over the Vatican hill; the via Ostiensis, where the burial and Church of St Paul are and the via Appia, on which resides the Cemetery “in Catacumbas.”

This last is the ancient Christian Cemetery now called the Catacomb of St Sebastian, The word “catacomb” was in fact originally the name of the site of this ‘Cemetery’ specifically and only later came to be used as a generic term for ancient subterranean Christian burial grounds. The Basilica over the Cemetery, now also entitled to St Sebastian, was originally known as the “Basilica Apostolorum” in memory of a tradition that the bones of Peter and Paul were kept there for a time, probably to save them from destruction in the era of persecutions. This is referred to in various ancient sources, including the Depositio Martyrum and confirmed by modern archeological research. The celebration of the feast “on three streets” would refer then to a procession to visit the site of St Peter’s burial at the Vatican that of St Paul, on the via Ostiensis and the Cemetery where their remains were once kept.

The poet Prudentius, writing in the very early 5h Century, calls the day “bifestum – a double Feast” and attests that on that day, the Pope would say a Mass at the Basilica of St Peter and then hasten to say another at St Paul’s. …

It should not be surprising, then, that at a certain point, the double Feast was divided and kept in a more manageable way as two separate Feasts. In the Gelasian Sacramentary, we find three Masses of Sts Peter and Paul assigned to 29 June – the oldest copy of the Gelasianum dates to roughly 750 but much of the material is considerably older, some of it reaching even to the days of St Leo the Great 300 years earlier. In some manuscripts, however, one of the three, “the proper Mass of St Paul” has already been assigned to 30 June. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, written roughly a Century later, we find the Feast of St Peter on 29 June and that of St Paul on the 30th – each Mass containing references to the other Apostle but they are, nevertheless, clearly distinct. Thus, by the time of Charlemagne, the “bifestum” of Prudentius had already been separated into a two day Feast.

At the traditional Mass of 29 June, the majority of the texts refer either to St Peter alone (Introit, Epistle, Alleluia, Gospel, Communion) or to Apostles generically, as in the Gradual “Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth.” The sole reference to St Paul is in the Collect, “O God, who hast consecrated this day by the martyrdom of Thy Apostles Peter and Paul, grant Thy Church to follow in all things the teaching of those through whom she first received the faith.” The Office is likewise dedicated almost entirely to St Peter.

The following day, therefore, the whole of the Liturgy is dedicated to St Paul and is not called a day within the Octave of the Apostles but rather “the Commemoration of St Paul.” The variable texts of the Mass all refer to him but a commemoration of St Peter is added to the Feast, in accordance with the tradition that the two, are never entirely separated, in the veneration paid them, by the Church. (The same is done on the Feast of St Paul’s Conversion and commemorations of Paul, are added to the Feasts of St Peter’s Chairs and Chains.) The Office is likewise dedicated entirely to St Paul; both the Mass and Office, however, make use of St Paul’s own testimony in Galatians, to the mission of the two Apostles: “For He who worked in Peter for the apostleship of the circumcision, worked in me too, among the gentiles and they knew the grace of God that was given to me.”

In the 1130s, a Canon of St Peter’s Basilica named Benedict, writes that it was still the custom in his time, for the Pope to keep the Feast of St Peter at the Vatican but then celebrate Vespers at the Tomb of St Paul in the great Basilica on the Ostian Way, “with all the choirs” of the City! Amen. (Liturgical Notes on the Commemoration of St Paul – GREGORY DIPIPPO).