February 26, 2025 at 11:20 a.m.
The moment Saint Peter ‘got it’
Saint Peter is a great hero, a model of servant leadership! Like Saint Paul, another icon of our apostolic faith, he has certainly had his share of detractors over the centuries, not always induced by malice. Like all saints, neither was born with a halo. To their benefit — and ours — the Scriptures do not shy away from tracking their spiritual progress. From Saint Peter, we learn much about God’s patience, plans and power in our personal faith journeys.
For Peter, it started as a jolt that came to him and his fishing companions like a lightning strike. Jesus bolts into their lives at a point in which they were most aware of their inadequacy and helplessness, unable to do well what they thought their lives were about. In the depths of discouragement, having worked all day for naught, Jesus enters their boat and says they have hardly begun, pull out into the deep, go further, come with me and I will show you how to do the impossible. We know the story from Luke’s Gospel (cf. Lk 5-11).
It goes further. The “depths” into which Jesus leads them is not lost on Peter. He realizes at once that he is in the presence of a power before which he is completely unworthy to stand. Appropriately, yet perhaps not completely aware why, he falls to his knees and says, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). Yes, before the amazing catch, Jesus was just “Master.” Now he is “Lord.” Was this Peter’s first profession of faith?
They say there are no atheists on a sinking ship. We recognize moments in our lives when we feel we have been saved by a force outside ourselves. If only for a moment, we come to our senses, realizing we are not our own masters or creators of our own guarded identities by which we advertise to the world what we think we ought to be (but secretly know we are not). Peter was never more honest, more himself, than when he was on his knees at the feet of his Lord, realizing the only way up was to confess his sins and let God be God.
It would take him many more years to process what that event had already taught him. We do not always recognize the grace that comes into our lives, even after we have been its beneficiaries. Not long after, Jesus would ask Peter and his companions what their opinion was of him: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16:15). Is it not a question as much for our time as it was for Peter? We know his bold response: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). No sooner does Jesus affirm that Peter is proclaiming the truth because he is opening himself up to “my Heavenly Father” (Mt 16:17) — not Peter’s “truth” but God’s truth — than he declares him the rock upon which “I will build my church” (Mt 13:18).
Satan does not miss this singular event, apparently entering Peter’s thoughts immediately. Peter soon succumbs to the temptation of thinking he has been promoted. He forgets what he learned at his first call, pridefully assuming he knows better than Jesus what his mission is to be. Jesus rebukes him sharply (“Get behind me, Satan!”) for “thinking not as God does but as human beings do” (Mt 16:23). Peter still does not get it. A disciple is no greater than his master and the mission of Jesus will be to suffer and die in the service of his brothers.
Fast forward to the Last Supper and that unique account of the meaning of the Eucharist that we find in the Gospel of St. John. The synoptic accounts all relate the institution itself, while John illustrates its effects. The Eucharist is not self-centered but transformative: it changes not only the substance of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, but the lives of all who receive in faith into the arms and eyes and hands and feet of Jesus himself in the world. The way Jesus reveals this is in the washing of the feet (Jn 13:1-17).
Peter still does not get it. When his turn comes he refuses at first, thinking it unworthy of Jesus to condescend to the status of a slave. Yet even more is being revealed here. Peter has not yet absorbed that Jesus is his savior — not just his pal, let alone his favorite disciple. Jesus knows that Peter values his friendship deeply, so he cuts right to the chase: if you do not let me wash your feet (that is, be your savior), then you cannot be my friend! Peter is stung by this thought of separation so he “lets” Jesus do his thing, so to speak. He wants the relationship to continue, of course, but does he understand what it is really all about?
The events to follow, with the fulfillment of the prediction of Jesus that Peter would betray him tell the rest of the story. The prediction of this denial is so central to Peter’s ultimate conversion — and ours, I would submit! — that all four Gospels account for it (Mt 26:33-35, Mk 14:29-31, Lk 22:33-34, Jn 13:36-38). The narratives of the betrayal itself each contribute their own context and color but the message is the same: Peter does not understand fully the nature of his friendship with Jesus. When does he finally get it?
Whatever gave Peter the courage to die as a martyr, crucified upside down because he deemed himself unworthy to die as Jesus did, must have come from a strength and courage from a source outside himself, just as Jesus had revealed at his commission of Peter as “the rock.” Peter was in need of rehabilitation after the shocking experience of the crucifixion and his dramatic betrayal. That moment came after the resurrection on the shore of the Sea of Galilee where he first encountered Jesus (cf. Jn 21:15-25).
The narrative is touching. Jesus appears as the disciples fumble about trying to resume their old ways. Three times Jesus asks Peter, “do you love me” (recalling the three denials). Instead of berating him, however, he re-commissions him to feed his sheep. Peter finally gets it. He realizes that precisely as a sinner, unworthy of his call, he receives the divine mercy of God lifting him up to do the soul-fishing he cannot do on his own. He receives the extraordinary grace of divine friendship, the true meaning of salvation. Now as a wounded healer he can participate in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, becoming in this world what Jesus wants him to be and God alone can make him. Will we get it, too?
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