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Hey there, Spouse.

Today is Tuesday, June 29th, 2021.

Now, all week, we are celebrating the two great men that have their feast days today, Saints Peter and Paul.

The reason why the church has been celebrating today as the feast day of St. Peter and Paul together is because today, June 29th, is the day that they were both executed in Rome under Emperor Nero. They were executed in the year 67. Now, they were executed as part of a

much bigger persecution of Christians, and Emperor Nero was not a good man. In fact, history tells us that

he burned down the city of Rome because he thought it was ugly, and then he blamed it on the

Christians when the Roman citizens were upset. So yesterday we talked about how the personalities of

Peter and Paul not only were so important in forming the early church, but they have also given

us an example of two important qualities

of our church, order and leadership from Peter, but then also a search for God in theology

and a quest to evangelize the world through St. Paul. Now, today we're going to start talking about

St. Peter. If you're reading through the Bible, you get to the Gospels before the writings of Paul. So we meet St. Peter first. St. Peter is an interesting guy. We know that he was a fisherman, that he lived in Galilee. And in fact, he first encounters Christ after a very frustrating night of fishing.

He and his brother Andrew have been out fishing and they haven't caught anything.

In the morning, they're coming in, but Christ tells them to cast their nets once more,

and they obey, and as you likely know, there were so many

fish that they caught, that their nets began to tear. They called their friends James and John

over to help them. They filled all of the boats, and the boats were so full of fish that they

nearly sank. Peter, of course, came in,

knelt before Christ, confessed that he was a sinful man, and Christ told him that he would no longer

be catching fish, but men. And Peter went and followed Christ. Now, as a follower of Christ, Peter was one of the inner circle.

When Christ went somewhere, and he couldn't take all 12 of his apostles, he would still take

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