Encounters with Paradox: A Photo Essay

“Why do Saint Peter and Saint Paul share a feast day?  Saint Polycarp has his own feast day, and whoever heard of him?  I thought he was a fish!”

From the grand ambo of the Basilica, Father Joe Corpora, C.S.C. (here pictured speaking at the Latino Enrollment Institute), juxtaposes two leaders of the early Church: Peter, the uneducated fisherman who thrice denied his best friend; and Paul, the eloquent spokesman for a Messiah he never met and whose followers he had persecuted.  It is difficult to imagine two men more different.  Why, asks Father Corpora, does the Church celebrate two such contradictory characters on the same day?

According to Father Corpora, the answer lies in a central similarity between Saints Peter and Paul: complete dependence on God.  Both great sinners who experienced even greater forgiveness, Peter and Paul remind us that the Church is vast enough to embrace paradox.  The Church celebrates contradiction so that we, too, can rejoice in the diverse ways that Christians live out the Gospel with complete dependence on God.

In my first weeks as a summer intern, I have encountered this truth through the remarkably diverse ministries of ACE.  United by complete dependence on God, ACErs carry out their shared mission to Catholic schools in wonderfully paradoxical ways.