The Feast of the Chair of St. Peter in Antioch, February 22, the Beginnings of the Church from the East to all the World
“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…” (Matthew 16:18)
Peter... Simon Peter, the rock and the "Leaders of the apostle", was the apostle entrusted by Jesus Christ, despite his mistakes, with a noble mission, asking him to be the Chief of the apostles and a sign of their unity, especially in the service of the Church’s unity, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).
The life of Peter the apostle was full of challenges and obstacles, and full of evangelism and faith, which made him one of the closest people to Jesus Christ. The leader of the twelve apostles as he was called, denied Christ three times, but then came to himself and repented. However, after Jesus died, he sought to preserve the legacy of his teacher through evangelization and the consolidation of fraternity in faith.
The Church celebrates the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter in Rome on January 18, coinciding with the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and the commemoration of the Chair of St. Peter in Antioch on February 22.
The name of Peter was mentioned first in the list of the twelve apostles in the gospels of Matthew, “These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him” (10: 2-4), Mark (3: 16-19), Luke (6: 13-16) and in the Acts of the Apostles, “When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James”. Noting that Peter was the first disciple among the 12, and a follower of John the Baptist.
Nevertheless, Peter's name symbolizes many connotations that may describe his life of faith and missionary path. Firstly, his name was Simon Bar-Jona, or Simeon in Syriac Aramaic, meaning hearer, obedient, and submissive. Jesus Christ called him Cephas, Aramaic word for rock or stone, in Greek Petros and Arabic Peter.
But what about Peter's birth and life?
Simon Peter was born in the village of Bethsaida, located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee (Tiberias), and lived in the village of Capernaum with his brother Andrew, who was also among the 12 apostles. The Holy Bible mentioned that the Lord Jesus entered Capernaum with his disciples, “As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them”. (Mark 1: 29-31, Luke 4: 38-39).
Simon was a fisherman as his brother Andrew. He was not a law expert and did not have any religious title. He neither was a priest, writer, or a Pharisee. He mastered the Syriac Aramaic language, and from a young age he learned the sciences of Sharia and the Law at the school of his village. When the apostles dispersed to preach throughout the world, Peter remained in Jerusalem and Judea to continue his preaching, but he faced fatigue and torment there and even imprisonment because he defended the word of Truth.
During his missionary journeys, Peter moved in the year 35 or 36 to Antioch, where he established his chair, continued his evangelization, and established the Church of Antioch, where disciples were first called Christians, and remained there until the year 42. Therefore, the Patriarch of Antioch is considered the legitimate successor of Peter’s chair, and take the title of “Patriarch of Antioch and All the East”.
Historically, so has been written about Peter the Apostle and his founding of the Church of Antioch, which was the capital of the East. The historian His Beatitude Patriarch Mor Aphrem I Barsoum, Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East (1957) said: “As for the Church of Antioch, and in the present ancient ecclesiastical tradition, an excellent elite of the early Christian imams, experts and ancient historians, proved that the Apostle Peter evangelized in this region, guided and baptized a lot of people, built the first Church and led the believers through prayer in the East, where he established his first apostolic see, and was its first patriarch, among all the successors patriarchs. This was also declared by Origen (+256), Eusebius of Caesarea (+340), St. Ephrem the Syrian (373+), St. John Chrysostom (407+), Hernemes the teacher (+420), and St. Severus of Antioch (538+), who mentioned Peter’s leadership among the apostles in his sermons and letters” (The Scattered Pearls: A History of Syriac Literature and Sciences, His Beatitude Patriarch Mor Aphrem I Barsoum, Homs Edition 1940 Vol. 1, P. 44 and 45).
From Antioch, Peter the Apostle moved his see to Rome, inspired by God, in the year 43, and entrusted St. Odeus to be his successor over the Church of Antioch. Peter managed the Church in Rome for 25 years until his martyrdom crucified in 67 during the reign of Nero. He requested his crucifiers to crucify him upside down, refusing to be crucified as his master. Noting that his body was placed in the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican City.
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