Who needs a March Madness bracket when today’s Saintly Sixteen matchup is basically a championship game? 🏀 

First, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️ We wish everyone a wonderful feast day… though sadly Patrick didn’t make the cut in this year’s Lent Madness bracket. But today we do have two #1 seeds going head to head in the Apostles & Allies region, and the prize is a trip to the Elate Eight.

In one corner: The Rock. The man with the keys to the kingdom and a chair with his name on it in Rome… St. Peter. 🔑 In the other: The Apostle to India, the man stuck with the most unfair nickname in history… St. Thomas (who asked one honest question and has been hearing about it ever since). 🤨

It’s PETER vs. THOMAS.

Watch today’s video for our surprising picks, read the blogs for an incredible breakdown of myths and legends, and cast your vote to see who joins St. Benedict, who just sent Anthony the Great back to the desert 77.22% to 22.38%, in the Elate Eight. 🏆 #LentMadness

Peter the Apostle

"But who do you say that I am?"

"You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

We have an entire feast day dedicated to this quote because this is it. This is what it’s all about.

Before any of the creeds, the prayer books, the liturgies that now guide our faith, these are the words on which the Church stood. That Jesus Christ was, is, and continues to be the Messiah - the redeemer, liberator, fulfillment of every one of God’s promises - and the Son of the living God.

This pure expression of faith, which echoes through the rest of scripture and down through history, came from the mouth of Peter - a young, cocky, deeply flawed man.

In the context of the rest of Peter’s life, the soundtrack to this conversation is less triumphant horns and more a tense orchestra. Because, if you look closely, you’ll see a red string that ties these words to Peter’s other most famous line, “I do not know this man.”

You cannot tell the story of Peter, of Christianity, of our collective faith without both of these quotes. To do so would water down his and humanity’s relationship with our God, who sees us on our best days and our worst days and loves us without taking either into account. We confess and we deny. We are in the garden and yet, we still eat the fruit.

Peter’s betrayal is included in all four Gospels, and his confession is in the three Synoptics. Mark’s Gospel account is famous for having no fluff and yet has four verses dedicated to Peter’s confession and seven verses for his denial. Clearly, these words are important to our faith.

If we follow Peter out of scriptures and into legends, we find a man haunted and inspired by these dialogues. Medieval Christians had a story attributed to Clement I, who was ordained by Peter, that Peter’s face was “burnt with tears.” He frequently cried for joy as he meditated on his time in Jesus’ presence and sobbed in agony when he remembered his betrayal.

(Sidebar: despite his tears, it seems that Peter never lost his bold personality. In another legend, he wrecked his archrival in Nero’s court with this sick burn:

“Let Peter say what I think.”
“I shall do it when he hath thought.”)

Holding Peter’s complexities, in his words and actions, is important for us today as we face a world that insists what is good must be perfect and what is bad is everything else. His witness is less for people looking for examples of flawlessness achieved through faith and more for people seeking comfort that God calls the deeply human beloved.

— Bekah Scolare

Thomas the Apostle

Surely much (more) could be said of the strange intricacies of how St Thomas the Apostle got down to India, or about the legend that he visited China before his death. (There are even folks in Paraguay who hold that “Pai Thome” made it all the way there to preach to the indigenous population of the time.)

But as fascinating as those legends are, there’s no denying that one quality looms foremost in any discussion, consideration, or (in this case) sportsmanlike big-ups of St. Thomas the Apostle: he was a doubter. Specifically, he doubted his fellow apostles’ claims that they’d seen the risen Christ. From our birds-eye 21st century perspective, we might better nickname the guy “healthily skeptical Thomas,” but that moniker is a bit of a mouthful.

One doesn’t need a 21st century viewpoint to appreciate the value in Thomas’s famous moment of doubt. St. Gregory the Great, who was Pope way back in the late 6th and early 7th centuries, observed that “The disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other disciples. As he touches Christ and is won over to belief, every doubt is cast aside and our faith is strengthened.”

As a thought experiment, picture the version of John’s Gospel where instead of, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe,” (John 20:25) Thomas had said to the Twelve, “Oh, you saw Jesus, our beloved and recently-brutally-executed teacher and friend? And he looked super great and 100% alive? Wow! Guess he really was the Messiah. Nice!”

Not only would we have been deprived of Jesus’ poetic bonus beatitude, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Hey! That’s us!); we also might never have gotten the miraculous scene that precedes it. That’s the moment when Thomas gets his wish. He touches Christ’s once-broken body and knows for sure that this is no ruse. Surely that’s what Pope Gregory was getting at: Thomas, in touching Christ’s scars and believing, touches them for all of us, and gives us a sacred pathway to belief.

— Marissa Flaxbart