Posted by St. Peter’s Chains/Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Peter’s Chains, as well as commemorating the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost. Since St. Peter was the first among the apostles there are several festivals of St. Peter during the liturgical year. There are the feasts of the Chair of Peter at Antioch and at Rome, the great feast of St. Peter (along with St. Paul) on the 29th June, as well as today’s feast of St. Peter’s Chains. Today’s feast refers to the incident of Peter’s miraculous escape from prison in the persecution under Herod Agrippa which we hear about in today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 12). This is the same persecution in which St. James (whose feast we celebrated last Sunday) was martyred. King Herod, having executed St. James, proceeded then to take St. Peter also. However, in contrast to St. James, St. Peter was miraculously enabled to escape from prison. From this time onwards he seems to have been no longer resident in Jerusalem but to have travelled extensively preaching the Gospel. He is associated with Antioch and above all with Rome, where he was eventually martyred under the Emperor Nero (along with St. Paul- this is why the Church commemorates St. Peter and St. Paul together, because they were both martyred in Rome at around the same time).
Many centuries later in 439 Eudocia, the wife of the Emperor Theodosius, went to Jerusalem in fulfilment of a vow. She was given many gifts, among which was an iron chain which was believed to be the same chain that St. Peter had been bound by King Herod. Eudocia subsequently sent this chain to Rome to her daughter Eudoxia. In Rome there was another chain which was believed to be the chain by which St. Peter had been bound under Nero. These chains became so entangled together that they seemed no longer two but one chain. Eudoxia’s Church of St. Peter on the Esquiline Mount was dedicated under the name of St. Peter in Chains, and a feast day instituted on 1st August in memory of it.
St. Augustine states that “It is with reason that, throughout all the churches of Christ, the iron chains wherein he was afflicted are reckoned more precious than gold. If his shadow as a visitor was so healthful, what is his chain now that he bindeth and looseth? If his empty image in the air had healing power, how much power must have been contracted by his body by those chains, whose iron weight sunk into his holy limbs during his suffering? If, before he testified, he was so mighty to aid them that called upon him, how much mightier is he now since his victory? Blessed were the links, doomed to be changed from fetters and shackles, into a crown, which by touching the apostle, made him a martyr. Blessed were the chains, whose prisoner left them for the Cross of Christ, and which brought him thither, not as instruments of condemnation, but of sanctification.”
This Feast of St. Peter’s Chains is also a good occasion for us to consider the Church’s teaching on relics. Since the time of the Protestant Reformation, the veneration of relics has often been called into question as a practice that is at best a distraction from the faith and at worst a practice that is harmful to the faith. However, the veneration of relics is a practice that has been accepted by the Church since the earliest ages as a means of strengthening faith. The Church does not require us to assent that every alleged relic is a genuine relic, but it does affirm the soundness of the basic theological principle undergirding this practice.
John Henry Newman stated that “the principle from which these beliefs and usages proceed is the doctrine that matter is susceptible of grace, or capable of union with a divine presence and influence…. Christianity began by considering matter as a creature of God, and in itself “very good.” It taught that matter, as well as spirit, had become corrupt, in the instance of Adam; and it contemplated its recovery. It taught that the highest had taken a portion of that corrupt mass upon himself, in order to the sanctification of the whole; that, as a firstfruits of his purpose, he had purified from all sin that very portion of it which he took into his eternal Person, and thereunto had taken it from a virgin womb, which he had filled with the abundance of his spirit…. As a first consequence of these awful doctrines comes that of the resurrection of the bodies of his saints, and of their future glorification with him; next, that of the sanctity of their relics; further, that of the merit of virginity; and lastly, that of the prerogatives of Mary, Mother of God. All these doctrines are more or less developed in the ante- Nicene period, though in very various degrees from the nature of the case.”
Similarly, Bishop Kallistos Ware states that, “because Orthodox are convinced that the body is sanctified and transfigured together with the soul, they have an immense reverence for the relics of the saints. Like Roman Catholics, they believe that the grace of God present in the saints’ bodies during life remains active in their relics when they have died, and that God uses these relics as a channel of divine power and as an instrument of healing. In some cases the bodies of saints have been miraculously preserved from corruption, but even where this has not happened, Orthodox show just as great a veneration towards their bones. The reverence for relics is not the fruit of ignorance and superstition, but springs from a highly developed theology of the body.”
As previously stated, none of this compels us to assent to the genuineness of every alleged relic, but our belief in the incarnation compels us to affirm the soundness of the basic theological principle on which the practice is based. We must avoid falling into the Gnostic error of reducing religion to the realm of the spiritual as opposed to the material, and instead affirm that since the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, matter (and that includes all the created order), can be redeemed and sanctified. Our faith rests not on the ultimate separation between heaven and earth, the spiritual and the material, but in their reconciliation, as we await that new heaven and that new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.