“Prayer, as the humbling trusting of ourselves to God and to His holy will, is always the way out of our personal and communal closeness. It is the great way out of closeness”. This is Pope Francis’ reflection in the sermon at today’s Mass in the Vatican Basilica on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. The Pope focussed his sermon on the pairing of “closeness/openness”, inspired by the reading of the Acts of the Apostles, that list three types of closeness: “Peter’s one in jail; that of the community gathered in prayer; and – in the close context of our passage – that of the house of Mary, mother of John Mark, where Peter goes knocking once he has been freed”. “In terms of closeness – the Pope points out –, prayer looks like the main way out: a way out for the community that risks closing up because of persecution and fear; a way out for Peter, who, still at the beginning of his mission, entrusted to him by the Lord, is thrown in jail by Herod and risks being sentenced to death”. Paul too, in the second letter to Timothy (the second reading of today’s Celebration), “speaks of his experience of release”, but it is a far greater ‘openness’, towards an infinitely wider horizon: that of eternal life, that awaits him once he has finished his earthly ‘run’. So it’s nice to see the Apostle’s life all ‘going outward’ through the Gospel: all cast forward, first to bring Christ to those who do not know Him, and then to throw himself, sort of, into His arms and be taken by Him ‘safe up in heaven, in His Kingdom’”.