The saints

Saint Peter

Apostle · Feast day June 29 (with Saint Paul) · First century · Galilee and Rome · Also known as Simon Peter, Cephas

Saint Peter, the fisherman Jesus renamed the Rock, was the leader of the twelve apostles and, by the witness of the early church, the first bishop of Rome, martyred there under Nero. He is the apostle of the second chance, who denied Christ three times and was restored to feed his sheep, and to this day his name means, to Christians everywhere, that grace is stronger than failure.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.Matthew 16:18 (KJV)

From Simon the fisherman to Peter the Rock

Simon was a fisherman of Bethsaida and Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, a married man who worked the water with his brother Andrew and his partners James and John. It was Andrew who first met Jesus and hurried to find his brother, saying, We have found the Messiah, and brought him to Jesus. At that first meeting Jesus looked at him and said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone. It was a strange name for so unsteady a man, a promise of what grace would one day make him.

From the day Jesus stood in his boat, told him to launch out into the deep, and filled his nets to breaking, Peter left everything and followed. He is always named first in every list of the twelve, the natural spokesman, bold, warm, and impulsive, quick to speak and quick to act. It was Peter who stepped out of the boat to walk on the water toward Jesus, and Peter who began to sink and cried, Lord, save me, and felt the hand that caught him. His whole life is in that moment: great faith and great fear, and a Lord who does not let him drown.

The great confession

The turning point of the Gospels came at Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was. It was Peter who answered for them all: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus blessed him and said that flesh and blood had not revealed it but the Father in heaven, and gave him the words the church has pondered ever since: Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. To Peter were promised the keys of the kingdom.

Yet in the very next scene, when Jesus foretold the cross, Peter rebuked him, and Jesus had to say, Get thee behind me, Satan. The same man could speak the highest truth and the deepest error within minutes. He was the rock and the stumbling block, and Jesus kept working with him still.

The denial and the restoration

On the night Jesus was betrayed, Peter swore he would die before he fell away. Jesus told him gently that before the cock crew he would deny him three times. Hours later, warming himself in the courtyard of the high priest while Jesus was tried, Peter denied three times that he even knew the man, the last time with cursing, and then the cock crew, and the Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and he went out and wept bitterly. It is one of the most human failures in all of Scripture, the collapse of the bravest of the twelve.

But the risen Christ did not cast him off. On the shore of Galilee, over a charcoal fire like the one in the courtyard, Jesus asked him three times, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me, once for each denial, and three times gave him back his calling: Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. Peter is forever the apostle of mercy, living proof that a fall, even a shameful one, is not the end of the story for anyone Christ has claimed. He does not restore Peter to a lower place, but sends him to shepherd the whole flock.

The rock of the early church

At Pentecost the frightened man who had denied his Lord stood before the crowds of Jerusalem and preached the first Christian sermon with such power that about three thousand were baptized that day. The early chapters of Acts belong to Peter: healing a lame man at the temple gate, preaching boldly before the very council that had condemned Jesus, telling them, We ought to obey God rather than men. He was imprisoned and freed by an angel, and it was to Peter that God gave the vision that opened the gospel to the Gentiles, so that in the house of the Roman centurion Cornelius he declared, God is no respecter of persons.

By the constant witness of the early church, Peter came at last to Rome and led the church there through the fires of Nero's persecution. He was crucified, and by an old and tender tradition he asked to be crucified head downward, not counting himself worthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. He left behind two letters in the New Testament, written to Christians under pressure, still steadying the persecuted church with their call to a living hope and their promise that after you have suffered a while, the God of all grace will himself restore you.

Why Peter still matters

Peter is loved above all the apostles because he is so like us: eager and unsteady, faithful and failing, forever speaking before he thinks, and in the end remade by sheer grace into a rock. His life is the clearest proof in the Gospels that Jesus builds his church not out of the flawless but out of the forgiven. The keys of the kingdom were placed in the hands of a man who had wept over his own betrayal, and that is the hope of every believer who has ever failed and feared it was too late.

A note for all traditions: the saints are honored across the church as examples of faith and, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as friends who pray with us, never worshiped, for worship belongs to God alone. What Scripture records and what later tradition holds are distinguished above. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every believer, not only the saints, is called to follow him.

Related: Saint Andrew · Saint Paul · Saints for June 29 · Saint of the day