Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
February 22, 2015
Spiritual Ponderings
St. Peter’s Fall and Reconciliation

Talk about timing, as the month of February comes to an end, we find ourselves on the Feast of The Chair of St. Peter.
For the last three weeks we have been reflecting on what led St. Peter to deny Christ and today we will look at the steps that led St. Peter to reconcile with Jesus. Quotes from Fulton Sheen book: Characters of the Passion: Lessons on Faith and Trust will be in bold and my work will be in the normal font.

So if these are the steps away from faith, what are the steps back to its embrace?
1. Disillusionment. Since pride is a capital sin, it follows that a first condition of conversion is humility: The ego must decrease, God must increase. This humiliation most often comes by a profound realization that sin does not pay, that it never keeps its promises, that just as a violation of the laws of health produces sickness, so a violation of the laws of God produces unhappiness.

The division between the world and Jesus basically comes down to the idea of two paths. Each promises that their path will lead a person to happiness. A person on a worldly path must first come to the conclusion that the things that the world promise would lead to happiness (money, sex, violence, etc.) do not actually lead to happiness. It is then that we can choose the other path – the path of Christ. Think of the Prodigal Son story.

2. Response to Grace. The next step in the return to God after the awakening of conscience through the disillusionment of sin is on God’s part. As soon as we empty ourselves , or are disillusioned, He comes to fill the void. “… No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). And Saint Luke tells us, “And the Lord turning looked on Peter” (Luke 22:61).

It is not enough to feel sorry for your sin, you must accept the opportunity for reconciliation. The difference between Judas and Peter is that Judas continued to do things his way and Peter turned to the Lord. Judas kept going down the path that he laid out before him and Peter turned off of his own path and took the Lord’s path.

3. Amendment. As sin begins with the abandonment of mortification, so conversion implies return to it. The king in Hamlet asked, “Can one be forgiven and retain the offense?” There are such things as occasions of sin, namely, those persons, places, and circumstances that dry rot the soul.
Peter’s conversion would not be complete unless he left that arena where maidservants, slaves, and human respect combined to make him deny the Master. No longer will he warm himself by firs, nor sit passively while his Judge is judged. The Scripture records his amendment or purgation in the simple words, “And going forth.” All the trappings of sin, the ill-gotten goods, the human respect he won, all these are now trampled underfoot, as “he goes out.”

Peter no longer cares about physical comfort or what others think of him. He is to full of grief and grace. His emotions show forth how much he loved Jesus and he does not care what others are thinking of him, a grown man crying. Peter will eventually be crucified also as a sign of his unwillingness to deny Christ again.

4. Sorrow. But this leaving of the tabernacles of sin would not be enough where there not sorrow. Some leave sin only because they find it disgusting. There is no real conversion until that sin is related to an offense against the Person of God. “Against Thee have I sinned,” says Scripture, not against “Space-time,” or the “Cosmic Universe,” or the “Power Beyond.” Have a sorrow that regrets offending God because He is all good and deserving of all our love, and you have salvation. –

Peter is sorry that he has hurt someone else and not because he has been caught or because he receives some political gain. He is sorry because he has hurt the one he loves.

Fittingly, therefore do the evangelists write, “And Peter going out, wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62). His heart was broken into a thousand pieces, and his eyes that looked into the eyes of Christ, now turn into fountains. Moses struck a rock, and water came forth. Christ looked on a rock and tears came forth. Tradition has it that Peter wept so much for his sins that his cheeks were furrowed with their penitential streams.