[A quick translation for the feast today, from the "most Roman of Popes," whose Latin eloquentia shines through very strongly in the original. A very important document for understanding Late Antique Rome and the Papacy.]
The whole world, Beloved, truly participates in all the Holy Solemnities: and the piety of the One Faith demands that, whenever any deed, done for the salvation of all, is being recalled in worship, it should be celebrated everywhere with common rejoicings.
Nonetheless, today's feast demands a special honor and exultation unique to our own City, beyond the reverence which this feast merits throughout the whole circle of lands. In this place where the departure of these preeminent Apostles was first glorified, let there be a primacy of joy on the day of their martyrdom!
For these are the men through whom the Gospel of Christ, O Rome, dawned for you in splendor, and through whom you, who were the Teacher of Error, were made the Student of Truth. These are your Holy Fathers and True Shepherds, who founded you in a much better and much more fortunate way, grafting you into the Heavenly Kingdoms, than those men by whose efforts the first foundations of your walls were laid: of whom the one who gave you your name defiled you with his brother's blood.
These are the men who have raised you to this glory: that through the Holy See of Blessed Peter you have been made a Holy Clan, a Chosen People, a Priestly and Royal State, and the Head of World, and now preside over a wider area through divine religion than through earthly dominion. For although you once extended the sway of your Empire throughout land and sea, increasing it by many victories, nevertheless that which violent labor subdued is less than that which the Christian Peace has embraced.
For God is good, and just, and omnipotent, who has never denied his mercy to the human race, who by his most abundant acts of beneficence has always taught all mortals in common to know him, who has had mercy on the blindness and wickedness of those who wandered at their own will, rushing headlong to ever worse things, by his even more discerning prudence and his even deeper piety, and sent his own Word, equal to him and coeternal with him. This one was made flesh, and thus united divine nature to human nature, so that his bending down to the lowest things might become our exaltation to the highest things.
But so that the effects of this unspeakable grace might be diffused throughout the whole world, with his divine providence he prepared the Roman Empire. Additions were gradually made to its borders, so that the totality of all nations everywhere might be made neighbors and acquaintances. For it was suitable for that work which was being divinely prepared that many kingdoms be made allies under one Imperium, so that the universal proclamation might quickly find accessible peoples, held under the discipline of a single state.
This state, however, ignorant of the author of her exaltation, although she was master of nearly all the nations, was herself a slave to the errors of all nations, and believed that she had made religion great because she had rejected no falsehood. But then, as tenaciously as she had been bound fast by the devil, so miraculously was she set free by Christ.
For when the Twelve Apostles, having received the ability to speak all languages through the Holy Spirit, had undertaken to pervade all the world with the Gospel and had distributed the parts of the earth among themselves, Blessed Peter, Primate of the Apostolic Order, was destined for the citadel of the Roman Empire: so that the light of truth which was being revealed for the salvation of all nations might diffuse itself more effectively from the Head itself through the whole Body of the World.
For what nation did not then have people in this City? Or what nations were ever ignorant of what Rome had taught? Here the divergent opinions of Philosophy must be trampled underfoot, here the vanities of earthly wisdom must be dissolved, here the worship of demons must be suppressed, here the impiety of all sacrifices must be destroyed, in the very place where every practice and belief that had ever been established by the varied errors of mankind had been collected and was being maintained with very diligent superstition.
To this city you, Most Blessed Peter the Apostle, were not afraid to come, and while the sharer in your glory, Paul the Apostle, was still occupied with setting the other churches in order, you, far more constant than when you walked upon the sea, entered this forest of raging beasts, this ocean of most turbulent depths. And you, who in the house of Caiphas had trembled at the servant-girl of the High-Priest, did not fear Rome, Master of the World.
For surely neither the power of Claudius nor the cruelty of Nero was a lesser thing than the judgment of Pilate and the fury of the Judeans?
Therefore it was the violence of your love which conquered all the reasons for fear; and you did not think it right to tremble at those whom you had undertaken to love. Indeed you had already conceived this passion of fearless charity at that time when the profession of your love for the Lord was strengthened by the mystery of threefold questioning. For from this intention of your mind he asked nothing else but that, pasturing the sheep of him whom you love, you give out that same food with which you yourself had been filled.
Your confidence had also been increased by so many signs of miracles, so many gifts of charisms, so many experiences of virtues. Already you had taught those peoples who had believed from the circumcision; already you had founded the Antiochene Church, where first the dignity of the Christian Name had arisen; already you had imbued Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithinia with the laws of the Preaching of the Gospel. You were not doubtful about the outcome of your work, nor were you ignorant of the extent of your own life, as you brought to the Roman citadels the Trophy of the Cross of Christ, a Cross through which, by divine pre-ordination, the Honor of Power and the Glory of Suffering awaited you.
To this same place your fellow Apostle, the Vessel of Election and special Teacher of the Gentiles, Paul, arrived and was joined to you at that time when all innocence, all decency, and all liberty were suffering under the Imperium of Nero. The fury of this man, inflamed through his excess in all vices, fell headlong into this fire of his own insanity, so that he was the first to inflict atrocity of a general persecution on the Christian Name, as though the grace of God was able to be extinguished through the murder of the saints, for whom in fact this was the greatest reward, that their contempt for this life become the gaining of eternal happiness.
'Precious,' therefore, 'in the sight of God is the death of his saints': nor is that religion founded on the Sacrament of the Cross of Christ able to be destroyed by any kind of cruelty. The Church is not diminished by persecutions, but increased: and always the Field of the Lord is clothed with richer fruit while the grains, which die alone, are born multiplied.
Thus the thousands of Blessed Martyrs testify to how much offspring those two shoots of divine seed have produced. These thousands of imitators of the Apostolic Triumphs have filled our city with bands robed in purple and shining far and wide with red, and have as it were crowned her with one crown assembled out of the honors of many gems.
In this garrison, Beloved, which has been divinely prepared for us to show us examples of patience and to strengthen our faith, we must indeed rejoice universally by the commemoration of all the saints, but in the preeminence of these fathers we should deservedly glory even more exultantly, whom the grace of God raised to so high a peak among the members of the Church that, in the body for which Christ is Head, he has established them, as it were, as the twin lights of the eyes.
About their merits and virtues, which surpass all ability to speak of, we ought to think nothing different, nothing divergent: because their election made them peers, and their labor made them the same, and their end made them equal.
As we ourselves have experienced and as our ancestors have demonstrated to us, so we believe and have confidence that, among all the labors of this life, in obtaining the mercy of God we will always be helped by the prayers of our special patrons: so that, as much as we beg mercy for our own sins, so much will we be raised up by the merits of the Apostles.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belongs one and the same Power with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one Divinity, forever and ever. Amen.