The Rash Passion of St. Peter

“And the Lord said, ‘Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”
— Luke 22:31-2

“Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.”
— John 21:17

Last weekend, we celebrated the feast day of St. Peter, the disciple to whom Jesus said, in Matthew 16:18-9, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah … you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”

Before these prophetic words came true, though, St. Peter had to face Gethsemane. The story is long-familiar—after the Passover meal, Jesus takes his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he brings his agony into prayer, and the disciples struggle against sleep. Judas leads a group of men carrying swords and clubs to Jesus, where he identifies him with a kiss. Jesus exchanges what were likely tense words with the angry crowd, who tell him they are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. “I have told you that I am He,” he repeats. “Therefore, if you seek Me, let these [the disciples] go their way” (John 18:8).

At this moment, St. John’s gospel tells us, “Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear.” We cannot know exactly what possessed St. Peter in this moment. But the randomness of the action suggests impulsiveness, lack of consideration, even panic. St. Peter seems to have been overcome by a desire to do something that could help the situation, save his friend; but he can’t figure out how to express that desire in action. The result is a half-strangled determination, an attempted gesture of protective love that does not find purchase.

Jesus’ response is calm but firm: “Put your sword into the sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given me?”

This moment is reminiscent of St. Peter’s other rash outbursts and actions in the Gospels, such as his bewildering suggestion at the Transfiguration to build three tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, or his attempt to walk on water toward Christ, in which his faith falters and he must be rescued. Or the moment in Matthew 16, just a few verses after Jesus tells St. Peter he’ll be the rock of the church, when St. Peter takes Jesus aside and tells Him to stop predicting His own death (“this shall not happen to You!”). Jesus returns a reply that feels almost vicious: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

During the Passover meal, before Gethsemane, Jesus turns to St. Peter and cries, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.” St. Peter seems confused. “Lord,” he replies, “I am ready to go with you, both to prison and to death.” Jesus then tells St. Peter he will deny that he even knows Jesus three times before the rooster crows.

Out of moments like these, a portrait emerges of a man capable of great passion and courage, wholly given to the cause of following Christ, but whose understanding and maturity have not quite caught up with his love. St. Peter does not want Jesus to suffer; he does not want Him to be kidnapped, or to die young, or to be alone when on trial. Perhaps even more than these, St. Peter does not want to lose his beloved Friend, on whom he has staked his future. St. Peter must have felt a near-constant internal pressure, even a sort of blaze, of passion for Jesus. The felt experience of this love seems to have blinded him to anything else. I suspect it caused him to overestimate the strength of his own passion, and to underestimate Christ’s love and the ethics of the Kingdom He had come to inaugurate.

Such a love as St. Peter’s is not something that can survive into maturity, or reach its full expression and power, without first being “sifted.” Christ’s words to St. Peter in the Upper Room—“Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you …”—are difficult words, even frightening. How could God possibly consent to deliver anyone He loves into Satan’s hand?

But if we pause and consider the nature of our loves, we see pretty quickly that any passion worth having is one that must be “sifted.” The suffering of shame we feel when the immaturity of our love is revealed to us—a suffering that can sometimes edge near despair—is perhaps the only sure way to burn up the chaff and strengthen the wheat.

I suspect the few days between Christ’s death and resurrection were the worst days of St. Peter’s life. Given the great passion he was clearly capable of feeling, what depths of despair and grief must he have entered when faced with his own failure? Perhaps he ran and hid to grieve in secret, like Adam and Eve in the garden, trying to keep his shame away from everyone he knew. Thus isolated, perhaps he experienced a crisis of personhood. Who am I if I am not, as I believed, the one who loves Christ unto death?

But then Easter. Then his footrace with St. John to the tomb. Then that morning by the sea of Galilee, when St. Peter realizes it is the risen Christ waiting for them on shore and jumps into the ocean with all of his clothes on, too eager to embrace Him again to wait for the boat to return to shore. Then the sequence of repeated questions over breakfast, the undoing of his denials—“Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?” “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”

We can learn many things from the example of St. Peter. One of them is that a passionate love riddled with imperfections is a gift from God. If we will simply stay the course, God will move our passion past its childish expressions to deepen, intensify, and cultivate it into strength. Another is that embarrassment and shame are sometimes moments of “sifting,” gifts of clarity in which we recognize how our loves fall short and receive opportunities to pursue their deeper life.

Jesus may periodically rebuke and train St. Peter’s passion, but He never scorns or belittles it. St. Peter’s passion is one of his greatest gifts. Christ patiently shepherds it, slowly but surely establishing it in St. Peter’s soul as the bedrock of the work he will be called to do after the Ascension. After all, only an unusually expansive, determined capacity for love—a rash sort of passion—could sustain the work of one called to establish and cultivate the Church.