Peter’s Denials
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that You are here, that You see me, that You hear me. I adore You with profound reverence. I ask Your pardon for my sins, and a grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
“Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times” (Luke 22:61). “And he went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62).
As the trial of Our Lord proceeds before the Sanhedrin, the saddest event of the life of Peter takes place.
The one who had left everything to follow Our Lord, who had seen so many miracles worked, and had received so many tokens of affection, now denies Him completely.
He feels that he has been cornered, and even swears that he does not know Jesus.
“And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the maids of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said to him, ‘You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.’ But he denied it saying, ‘Woman, I do not know him’” (Mark 14:66–68).
“And he went out into the gateway, and the maid saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, ‘This man is one of them.’ But again he denied it” (Mark 14:68–70).
“And after a little while again, the bystanders said to Peter, ‘Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean’” (Mark 14:70).
We are told in St. Mark, “But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, ‘I do not know this man of whom you speak’” (Mark 14:71).
He denies that he knows Our Lord, thereby denying the deepest meaning of his life, which is to be an apostle and a witness to the life of Christ and to proclaim that Jesus is the Son of the living God.
His honor, his vocation to be an apostle, all the hopes that had been placed in him by God, his past and his future — all these came tumbling down.
How could he possibly have said, “I do not know this man”?
A miracle worked by Our Lord a few years before had had for him a deep and special significance.
On seeing the miraculous draught of fish, Peter had understood everything. He fell down at Our Lord’s knees saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). St. Luke says that he was astonished.
It is as though in a flash, everything had become clear for him: the holiness of Christ and his own condition as a sinful man.
Black stood in clear contrast with white, darkness with light, dirt with cleanliness, sin with sanctity.
At that moment, while his lips were saying that because of his sins he felt unworthy to be close to Our Lord, his eyes and his whole attitude were asking that he might never ever depart from Him.
That was such a happy day.
That was when everything really began for him. Our Lord had said to him, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men” (Luke 5:10).
“When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:11).
Peter’s life from that moment on would have a most marvelous purpose, that of loving Christ and being a fisher of men.
Everything else would serve as a means and an instrument to that end.
But now, out of weakness and having allowed himself to be overcome by fear and human respect, everything had collapsed.
Sin, infidelity to a greater or a lesser degree, always involves a denial of Christ and of that which is most noble within us — a denial of the highest ideals that Christ has sown inside us.
Sin is the great downfall of man. That is why we need to struggle with determination, counting on grace, so that we avoid all grave sins, whether of malice, weakness, or culpable ignorance, and then all deliberate venial sin.
From our sins, when we are unfortunate enough to commit them, we have to draw advantage, because contrition strengthens the bonds of our friendship with Our Lord.
Our mistakes should never discourage us, provided that we act with humility. One writer says a sincere act of repentance is always the occasion of a new encounter with Our Lord, from which we can derive some completely unsuspected consequences on our interior lives.
When we sin, we have to come back again to Our Lord as often as is necessary, without getting anxious, although certainly with sorrow.
Peter took an hour to fall, but in an instant he rights himself and sets about raising himself higher than he was before his fall.
Heaven is full of great sinners who decided to repent. Jesus always welcomes us and rejoices to see us set out again on the road we had abandoned, possibly in small matters.
Our Lord, having been much ill-used, is led into one of the courtyards. He then turned and looked at Peter. Their looks meet. Peter would have liked to bow his head, but he cannot tear his eyes from Him, Him whom he has just denied.
He knows Our Lord’s looks well. That look that had determined his vocation. He hadn’t been able to resist either its authority or its charm.
And that tender look of the Master’s on the day he had affirmed, looking at his disciples, “Here are my brethren, my sisters, my mother” (cf. Mark 3:34–35).
And that look that had made him tremble when he, Simon, had wanted to banish the cross from Our Lord’s path.
And the affectionately pitying look with which He had invited the rich young man to follow Him.
And His look clouded with tears before the tomb of Lazarus.
Peter knows these looks well. That same writer continues, and yet never, never had he seen on the Saviour’s face the expression he sees there at this moment.
The eyes marked with sadness, but without any severity.
A look of reproach without a doubt, but which becomes suppliant at the same time, and seems to repeat to him, “Simon, I have prayed for you” (cf. Luke 22:32).
This look only rests on him for an instant. Our Lord is violently dragged away by the soldiers, but Peter sees Him all the time. He sees that compassionate look of Our Lord fixed upon the deep wound of his guilt.
Peter now understands the enormity of his sin, and of Our Lord’s prophecy about his betrayal. And he remembers the words of Our Lord, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times” (Luke 22:61).
“And he went out and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62).
St. Augustine comments, his going out was to acknowledge his fault. He was able to weep bitterly because he knew how to love. The bitterness of sorrow in him quickly gave way to the sweetness of love.
Knowing that Our Lord had looked upon him prevented Peter from falling into despair. The look of Our Lord was one of encouragement, in which Peter felt understood and forgiven.
It would have reminded him of the parables of the Good Shepherd, of the prodigal son, and of the lost sheep.
Peter went out. He moved away from that whole situation in which he had imprudently placed himself. He went out to avoid any possible relapses. He realized that this was not the place for him to be.
He remembered his Lord and he wept bitterly. We may see ourselves in the same situation as Peter — sorrow of love.
Because Our Lord is good, because He is our friend, who gave His life for us, because everything good that we have is His, because we have offended Him so much, because He has forgiven each one of us.
St. Josemaría in The Way, number 436, says, “Weep, my child, with sorrow of love.”
Contrition gives special strength to the soul. It restores hope. It makes the Christian forget himself and draw close to God once more with a deeper act of love.
Contrition proves the quality of interior life and always attracts God’s mercy.
We are told in Isaiah, “This is the man to whom I will look: he that is humble and contrite in spirit” (Isa. 66:2).
Christ found no difficulty in building His Church upon a man who was able to fall and who did fall. God counts on weak instruments, provided they repent, to carry out His big project, the salvation of mankind.
It is possible that after the denials and his repentance, Peter would have gone to look for Our Lady for some encouragement and comfort from her after this great catastrophe.
That is what we also have to do at times when our own faults and denials, our miseries and our wretchedness come more vividly to mind; or when the Holy Spirit lets us see that we are all potential Hitlers, that we are all capable of the most terrible things. It leads us to soften our judgments of others.
As well as giving the soul great strength, true contrition also brings special happiness, and enables us to be effective in our dealings with others.
In The Way of the Cross we are told, the Master passes very close to us, again and again. He looks at us, and if you look at Him, if you listen to Him, if you don’t reject Him, He will teach you how to give a supernatural meaning to everything you do. Then you too, wherever you may be, will sow consolation, peace, and joy.
Our Lord also looked at Judas, who was encouraged to come back in the moment of the betrayal when he could hear Our Lord calling him friend. “Friend, why are you here?” (Matt. 26:50).
At that moment he didn’t repent, but later he did.
We are told in St. Matthew that “when he saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver” (Matt. 27:3).
What a contrast between Peter and Judas. Both, in different ways, betrayed their fidelity to their Master. Both repented. Peter, in spite of his denials, would become the rock on which the Church of Christ would be set until the end of time.
Judas went and hanged himself. Human repentance alone is not enough. It produces anxiety, bitterness, and despair.
Linked to Christ, repentance is turned into a joyous sorrow, because a lost friendship is regained.
Peter is united to Our Lord in an instant, and much closer than he had ever been before, because of his sorrow for his denials.
And out of his denials is born a faithfulness that would take him even to martyrdom.
With Judas, it is just the opposite. He is left on his own. “What is that to us?” said the chief priests. “See to it yourself” (Matt. 27:4).
In the isolation brought about by sin, Judas would not go to Christ; he had lost hope.
So we need to awaken frequently in our hearts a sorrow born out of love for the sins that we have committed.
As we make our examination of conscience at the end of each day, that is when we can prepare for confession.
We can ask Our Lady to help us with that joy of love.
True conversion is shown by the way we behave. We show that we really want to improve by the way we do our work or our study. We show it by the way we behave towards our family — the offering up to God in the course of the day of little mortifications which make life for those around us more pleasant, or which make our work more effective.
We can also show it by making a careful preparation for and going to confession frequently.
Sometimes Our Lord asks us for special mortifications. The Church outlines certain days when we should fast or abstain, an extra opportunity that we have.
St. Francis de Sales says it is fasting and abstaining which strengthens our spirit as it mortifies our flesh and our sensuality. It raises our soul to God. It gets rid of concupiscence by giving us the strength to overcome and to mortify our passions. And it disposes our heart so that it might seek for nothing except to please God in everything.
During Lent and Holy Week, the Church asks for those signs of penance: abstinence from the age of fourteen, and fasting between the ages of eighteen and the end of our fifty-ninth year. These things can bring us closer to God, and give a special joy to our soul.
The Church also asks us to be generous in giving alms, and to practice this with a merciful heart, wanting to console someone in need or to contribute according to our means to some work of apostolate for the good of souls.
St. Leo the Great says, all Christians can practice almsgiving, not only the rich and powerful, but those too who are no more than moderately well off, and even the poor. In this way, people who are unequal in their capacity to give alms are equal in the love and affection which they give to others.
Detachment from material wealth, mortification, and abstinence purify us from our sins and help us to find God in our everyday life.
St. John of the Cross says whoever seeks God while wanting to hold on to his own likes and dislikes may seek Him day and night but will never find Him.
Our daily duties are the principal source of this mortification: order, punctuality in starting our work, the concentration and intensity that we can bring to it.
Through our contact with others, we will find occasion to mortify our selfishness and help create a more pleasant environment around us.
St. Josemaría says in Christ Is Passing By, the best mortification is that which overcomes the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life in little things throughout the day.
Ours should be a mortification which doesn’t mortify others, and which gives us more finesse, more understanding, and more openness in our dealings with everybody.
You are not mortified, he said, if you are touchy, if your every thought is for yourself, if you humiliate others, if you don’t know how to give up what is unnecessary and sometimes what is necessary, if you become gloomy because things don’t turn out the way you had hoped. On the other hand, you can be sure that you are mortified if you know how to make yourself all things to all men, in order to save all.
Each one of us has to try and draw up a specific plan of mortifications for each day, and particularly at this time.
We need to try and stimulate in our souls a deep and effective desire to go back once again, to return like the prodigal son, so as to be closer to Our Lord.
This is an excellent time to bring about our conversion. St. Paul says to the Corinthians, “We entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain… Behold, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:1–2).
Our Lord says to each one of us again and again in the depths of our heart, “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12).
Now is the time when this beginning again in Christ can be sustained by a special grace from God, proper to this liturgical season that has just started.
That is why the Lenten message is full of hope and joy, even though it is a message of penance and mortification.
We are told by one writer, when any one of us realizes he is sad, he must think it is because I am not close enough to Christ. When one of us becomes aware, for instance, of an inclination toward ill humor or towards bad temper, he must similarly remind himself; if he throws the blame on things around him, he will be wide of the mark, he will be looking in the wrong direction.
Sometimes it is possible to have a certain apathy or spiritual sadness. This may have its root cause in tiredness or sickness, but it more frequently stems from a lack of generosity in doing what God is asking of us, from an ineffectively feeble struggle to mortify our senses, from a lack of concern for other people — in a word, it has its origin in a state of lukewarmness.
We can turn to Our Lady and ask her to help us so that we may undergo this conversion, this contrition that we see in Peter’s life. From this low moment, he goes on to become a great saint and a great apostle, in spite of his miseries, to be remembered for all time, to encourage us that we too have to go forward to be great saints and great apostles.
We are told in The Way of the Cross, you who tend to lose heart, I will tell you something that is very consoling. When a person does what he can, God will not deny his grace.
Our Lord is a Father, we are told in The Way of the Cross, and if in the silence of his heart one of his sons says to Him, “My Father in heaven, here I am, help me,” if he goes to the Mother of God, who is our Mother, he will get through.
I thank You, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that You have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask Your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
EW