What do you call brothers who are born on the same day? Twins, of course. That is what we celebrate today in the inestimable saints, Peter and Paul. Wait: twins? Yes. The early Church believed that Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome on the same day. Since the day of martyrdom is celebrated as a saints’ birth into eternal life, the result is striking: Peter and Paul are twins in God’s family, the Church.

A Catholic friend of mine occasionally says, “The Eucharist is not a noun. It’s a verb.” In so saying, he is making the point that the Eucharist isn’t simply Jesus’ bodily presence given to us in holy Communion. It also manifests the dynamic pattern by which Christ actively loves and saves us. He teaches us to cooperate with that pattern. This Eucharist actually embodies four verbs: Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives. Let’s consider each one.

I am amazed at how my four siblings teach their many kids in age-appropriate ways. For example, now that my nephew Brandon is 24 years of age, they give him insights and freedoms that would have been positively confounding or even dangerous when he was a toddler. Imagine if they had taught him at age four how to drive a car, use a credit card online, or handle power tools. But eventually, they did, and he is a high functioning young man, I’m proud to say. They are good teachers.

When I was a seminarian almost 20 years ago, a bank vice president taught us etiquette classes. She said, “Gentlemen, please make sure your breath isn’t bad. Take some breath mints before you hear confessions, okay?” We nervously laughed because the proximity that makes breath noticeable (whether pleasant or not) can be a bit awkward.

The famous 20th century St. Padre Pio said once that he would wait outside the gates of heaven until the people in his life had entered. I’m not sure that I, or frankly many people I know, would say that and mean it. Yet that is precisely the kind of attitude we see in Jesus as he prays for us in the Gospel today. Having celebrated the Ascension of the Lord just a few days ago, we now hear the Son of God at the Last Supper pray to his Father “that they may be brought to perfection as one” (John 17:23). What does this mean for us?