Fr. Michael Clark celebrated the External Solemnity of St. Peter & Paul at the Oratory on Sunday, July 2nd.  Here is an excerpt from his powerful sermon:

The obelisk which stands in St. Peter’s Square is the last thing that St. Peter saw on earth with his eyes, because he was crucified upside down in the Vatican Circus.  The choice of location was obvious, because behind the Vatican Circus was a cemetery for foreigners which was frequently used by the Jewish community of Rome.  Therefore, after the Apostle had been dispatched, he was buried in a small and humble grave in the foreigners’ cemetery behind the circus.  As his blood drained away into the sand of the arena, it will also have metaphorically drained into the Tiber River and trickled its way down to meet the blood of another Apostle, that of St. Paul, martyred by tradition the same day but in a different location.  St. Paul was taken out of the city into the woods on the Via Laurentina, and there he was executed by being beheaded at a site which is now a Cistercian Abbey, San Paolo alle Tre Fontane, to mark the three fountains that sprung up from where his head lay.  The blood in the Tiber River of these two Apostles has forever stained the city of Rome, but has also given it its majesty, because….

To listen to Fr. Clark’s sermon for the External Solemnity of St. Peter and Paul, click here.