Via Crucis :: Immersion

Fourth Station:  Jesus is Denied by Peter (Matthew 26: 69-75)

Denial in the Courtyard

 ⁶⁹ All this time, Peter was sitting out in the courtyard. One servant girl came up to him and said, "You were with Jesus the Galilean."

 ⁷⁰ In front of everybody there, he denied it. "I don't know what you're talking about."

 ⁷¹ As he moved over toward the gate, someone else said to the people there, "This man was with Jesus the Nazarene."

 ⁷² Again he denied it, salting his denial with an oath: "I swear, I never laid eyes on the man."

 ⁷³ Shortly after that, some bystanders approached Peter. "You've got to be one of them. Your accent gives you away."

 ^74-75 Then he got really nervous and swore. "I don't know the man!"

   Just then a rooster crowed. Peter remembered what Jesus had said: "Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times." He went out and cried and cried and cried.

How can it be that one of the inmost of disciples, one of those closest to Him, could deny him? Recognized by many and fearful for his own life, Peter denied that he even knew who Jesus was. And Jesus? He knew before that such would happen. Was he surprised when the cock crowed the third time and found that Peter had in fact denied him? Did he speak the words to Peter to give warning of the frail human character, hoping Peter would find a strength to affirm and not deny? Already wounded by the betrayal and the condemnation of the Sanhedrin, was this merely a scratch to the already festering woundedness or was it the knife in the back that trumped all other pain?


Father God, Christ himself states that the only unforgivable sin is the denial of the Holy Spirit. However that may be, keep me ever on guard that I may find strength enough, boldness and courage to never deny who Jesus Christ is to me, for me, and upon me.