A Walk In Faith: Reintroducing Saint Peter
By Abigail Bargender
“Lord, I’m not worthy that You should enter under my roof…”
There was a day when I said this without thinking during Mass, but lately I say it with my heart. I am not worthy of Him. His goodness is inexpressible while the stain of my sin is deeply set.
During Advent, I took up the practice of reading a chapter of Luke per day (or at least trying) in preparation for the birth of Christ. On the 22nd day, the reading was of the Last Supper, when Jesus explains to the apostles He will be betrayed by one of them. The twelve instantly discussed among themselves who it could be. Reading verse 23 of Luke 22 brought me, during that time, to bow my head and close my eyes in shame and understanding. I had felt the twelve had missed an opportunity for reflection with the Lord’s words by speculating (perhaps gossiping) amongst themselves whom each thought it could be. I wondered how many careless guesses and wrongful assumptions there were that night, swapped and swirling in Christ Jesus’ presence, leaving His warning improperly attended.
Not only this, but each of the twelve might have, in their own ways, dismissed the possibility of it being himself. So similarly do I fall into such thinking today. I think I see the ways in which others could better follow Christ or the ways in which they’ve betrayed Him, but am blind to myself. As they did in verse 24, I have regarded myself as greater at times, and it is likely the failing of many Christians. Yet, we each have our times of betrayal. No matter how much we think we aren’t going to leave Christ, the true test, those Peter or Judas moments can still overtake us if we aren’t vigilant. A vigilance in faith and self-awareness, because our “greatness” can’t preserve us from sin or prevent us from betraying our Lord with a kiss.
As of late, I’ve been overwhelmed with my own betrayals of my Lord. I don’t feel “great” in the least. The saints are figures who are intimidating at the same time they are inspiring because they’ve mastered themselves and conquered sin while I still struggle with the same chains which have been dragging on my ankles for years, and my efforts to loosen them have felt in vain. The difficulty of walking still sinful makes me feel like a mooch of Jesus’ mercy; in a way, still serving my worldly desires as Judas Iscariot did even when receiving His Body and Blood during the Last Supper. The words of Christ in Matthew 26:24 follow me, “...but woe to that man by whom the Son of God is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.”
As a prolife woman and having never understood these words, they made me confused and fearful. In the book of her visions, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich sees Christ say this even again in the garden when He sees His betrayer coming for Him. He’s clearly speaking of Judas, a man selling Him into the hands of men conspiring His death; yet, as we’ve all betrayed Him in some ways, this is a warning to all of us. I first implore you to not mistake His words as justification for abortion. Notice that Judas is alive and considered one of His friends, and we know that God created him. The warning is that because of his evil deed, his just punishment is hell. Christ Himself is acknowledging a fact: such a fate is worse than having never existed. Since we all have an inconceivable impact on those we meet, it’s a pretty strong thing for Jesus to say it would’ve been better for Judas’s very life to have never happened if it could save him from the disastrous fate his evil work had brought upon him.
Yet, even for Judas there had been hope. In the The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich sees Judas find the workers building Christ’s cross and he’s just as terrified by it as I have been at the weight of my sinfulness. She said:
He fled as fast as possible, but where did he fly? Not towards the crowd that he might cast himself at the feet of Jesus, his merciful Saviour, implore his pardon, and beg to die with him–not to confess his fault with true repentance before God, but to endeavor to unburden himself before the world of his crime, and of the price of his treachery.
Reading the chapter of Judas’s despair was extremely difficult, but I clung to the Blessed Anne Catherine’s visual of the momentary opportunity for hope that Judas could have taken. He could have thrown himself before Jesus. But he hadn’t, and his story is permanently memorialized as a tale of woe.
On the other hand, Peter’s betrayal was false pride in his faithfulness, and he ultimately failed to not deny Jesus three times during Christ’s final hours. Like Peter, often when I sin, I’ve forgotten my promises to Christ until after the cock crows. I’m mournful of this each time I realize my faults and failings may have been allowed because of my diverted attention–losing sight of Him for that fateful and narrow occasion of sin before the rushing of shame, grief, and sorrow floods my heart and brings me back to my senses. I in no way feel the “greatest”–it is these times that as Jesus tells Peter in Luke 22:31 that satan is sifting us all like wheat.
But Christ reassures saying He has prayed for Peter’s faith to not fail in Luke 22:32. I imagine Jesus, as He walked the earth or even the gardens of Gethsemane and Olives the night of the Last Supper, knew each of the steps we would take. The mistakes. As He prayed for Peter, He would’ve thought of you or me. The Lord knows our weakness and the difficulty of the journey to sainthood, but He also prayed that our mistakes wouldn’t destroy our faith–that reconciliation would strengthen us and those around us. So not only does our vigilance require prayer but also requires coming to terms with our failings, confessing them, and accepting His merciful love so we can start afresh stronger and with more power of self-mastery, self-control, and evangelization than before.
Judas’s faith failed; yet, had he chosen to trust his Master, he could’ve had the greatest stories of conversion that could’ve evangelized many. Just imagine: he could have proclaimed that even after he’d sold his Lord to His murderers, hours before His death, he was forgiven of so great a treason. What a testimony of Christ’s mercy that could have been! Still, we know it was not. Bl. Anne Catherine’s visions show the final struggles of Judas in his agony brought on by his deed and the terrorization of the devil, and thus he decided his own end: “Overcome by despair Judas tore off his girdle, and hung himself on a tree which grew in a crevice of a rock, and after death his body burst asunder, and his bowels were scattered around.”
Our stories must be like Peter’s–that our faith held even when our false pride failed and we sinned, denied, the Son of God. Peter sought to trust in the Lord, and he was able to reconcile with the Lord in John 21:13-15 by recommitting to love Him. I am not worthy, but Christ renews me. When I come to Him, I’m not a mooch, even as I carry again the same sins to the confessional. In the Manual for Spiritual Warfare by Paul Thigpen, he shares one of St. Catherine of Siena’s visions in which the Lord said to her:
I’ve appointed the Devil to tempt and to trouble My creatures in this life. I’ve done this, not so that My creatures will be overcome, but so that they may overcome, proving their virtue and receiving from Me the glory of victory. And no one should fear any battle or temptation of the Devil that may come to him, because I’ve made My creatures strong, and I’ve given them strength of will, fortified in the Blood of My Son…So I let him tempt you because I love you, not because I hate you. I want you to conquer, not to be conquered, and to come to a perfect knowledge of yourself and of Me.
He loves me. I love Him. I need to love Him more. More than sin, more than the world, more than comfort, and more than fear. He wants to grant me the grace of His mercy, wash away the stain and the shame with a tidal wave greater than the floodings of guilt. And He says that I am strong because He made me so. Instead of giving in to desperate ideas we are fed by satan to feel hopeless over sin like Judas, we can believe in reconciliation and victory as St. Peter. Should I choose the only greatness worth pursuing, I can become a saint, for as St. Paul said in Philippians 4:13, “I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.” I am not worthy, but He wants me and gives me strength.
“Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter my roof; but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.”
