Alleluia!

Legend and devotion has it that the Risen Christ appeared first to his blessed Mother. Maybe; it would have been a fitting reward to her unshakable faith. But the first recorded appearance, the first appearance we are sure of, was to – of all people – Simon. That is, of course, Peter, though he hardly deserved the name and I expect he shuddered if anyone used it. “Simon”, though, was as bad: no-one had used it for three years, and here it was surfacing again. He knew why he was being denied his Christian name, and knew too well. Another legend says that for the rest of his life, after complete forgiveness, after leading the Christian community, after becoming the first Pope, after being imprisoned in Rome in the sure hope of dying with the Lord as he had sworn he would do (that was Jesus’ last desperate attempt to make him grasp that his sins had been flung into the depths of the sea) he still never ceased to weep for that moment of madness in the High Priest’s courtyard, until the tears wore furrows in his cheeks.

I can understand Peter’s lifelong sorrow. There is something in the life of each one of us that we cannot look back on without flinching, as if a sore spot had been touched. It may have been a sin – it is a fact concealed but well-documented (and I know it directly, though, thank God, not in my own person) that abortion leaves lifelong psychological and spiritual damage. It may have been a moment of great shame; it may have been a hut done to us – it may be another person, or even circumstances or God, that we cannot forgive, rather than ourselves. Or it may be something for which we “cannot forgive ourselves” even though we know perfectly well we were not to blame. A common example is having failed to be present at the moment of death of someone we love. Maybe we were there day and night for weeks; but we will never forgive ourselves for having been elsewhere at that instant. Some of us find that we can scarcely look back at any moment in the past without flinching for one reason or another. So Peter was simply reacting in a normal human way. But, as I said sadly on Good Friday, there is still a lot of the human, as opposed to the superhuman, in Christianity, and it should not be there. it should not have been there in Peter, and it should not be there in us.

The Lamb of God takes away our sins; He takes away our guilt as well, and we should also allow Him to take away our guilt or otherwise painful memories. A lot of emphasis is placed now upon the “healing of memories” by psychotherapists, counsellors and others. They are quite right: our memories do need healing. But I do not believe anyone can heal what is within us except the One who knows what is in humankind. Human beings can soothe the pain of them and help us to understand them (and that is already something) but no more. It’s not that difficult to make someone feel better but only a miracle can heal the scars: and a miracle is precisely what the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection was. it is not impossible that God chose Peter precisely in order to hammer home the completeness not only of forgiveness, but also of healing, that is offered to us. if Peter did carry the scars of his memories with him to the grave, that was not God’s will, nor was it for want of trying on His part.

I arrived at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper this year with my usual burden of painful memories. I am such a fool, so inclined to say and do the wrong thing, to react sharply, to let pride run away with me, to be complacent, petulant, selfish, sulky, cowardly…shall I go on? As quite often happens, when I settled down to pray afterwards, one of the memories rose up from nowhere and gave me a kick in the solar plexus. I winced. Then by association of ideas another joined it, and another, until I felt that I was being assailed by a hail of missiles. I suppose I could have prayed to St Stephen; instead I thought of Peter, and began to enter into his memories rather than my own. And I flinched in sympathy as I ran through his appearances in the Gospel.

Since it was Maundy Thursday, what sparked off my train of thought was his behaviour at the Last Supper: he managed to get it wrong in two opposite directions in the space of thirty seconds. I suspect that when Jesus returned to the table and asked “Do you know what I have done to you?” he gave Peter a quick but searching stare; and Peter either nodded vigorously (having, al the same, not a clue) or else shook his head mournfully. Never could he have looked back at that event without an embarrassed shudder. but he never did twig, poor Peter. After ceaselessly hammering home his teaching of giving without expecting any reward, Jesus found himself being asked by Peter “And what shall we have?” Patient as ever, he gave Peter the answer. But maybe not without an ironic shake of the head. Which is what Peter remembered. “Oh dear, I should never have said that”. And he had forced Jesus into a rather unusual miracle by his over-confident declaration (prompted by extreme nervousness) that oh yes, of course Jesus paid the Temple tax. Jesus’ rebuke on that occasion was very gently: it has the tone of one explaining something to a rather thick six-year-old. But that was not the case when Peter, in horror (quite reasonably, humanly speaking) at the prophecy of the Passion, protested. He’d put his foot in it many times, and Jesus had been calm, gentle and, mostly, patient. But now! Peter quailed and backed off under the onslaught, finding himself addressed not as Peter, not even as Simon, but as Satan. “Oh dear” thought Peter many years later. “I think he was right…and it doesn’t help that it was I who confessed him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. He as good as told me that it wasn’t me saying it at all.” And who was it, when Jesus said that they should sell their cloaks and buy swords (I am not sure exactly what he meant, but I am sure he did not literally mean what he said), who produced a sword, and waved it about? There were four of them, but we know one of them was Peter. And when he tried to use it, he was told in no uncertain terms that he had got the wrong end of the stick…or the sword…again. “Well,” he consoled himself (as I console myself) at least my faults mean that I am tolerant and forgiving. I have obviously taken on board at least that essential piece of teaching.” No, Peter, unfortunately not, as your memory will tell you in a split second. Your generous offer to forgive your brother seven times made Jesus, figuratively or actually, throw his hands up in despair.

Peter sighs. “I warned him,” he says. “I told him to go away from me for I am a sinful man.” You did, Peter; and what would have happened to you if he had taken you at your word? “Oh dear,” he mutters again. And unfortunately, thinking about boats brings up another uncomfortable memory. Who was it that (a) did not believe that the walker on the sea really was Jesus (b) was confident that he could do it too (c) sank at the first puff of wind and (d) was informed, by One who knew, that he hadn’t any faith to speak of. And looked a right idiot, too, being hauled, drenched, into the boat. By now Peter, as I visualise him, is sitting hunched up in exactly the same position as my soul, and maybe my body too, adopts once Sister Mind has been allowed to wander among her memories. And I feel a great deal better.

But I feel better not for the obvious, human reasons. It’s not a sort of Schadenfreude, pleasure that St Peter was as bad as I am or even worse. or even consolation that someone like Peter could be so hopeless and make it all the same. it is the knowledge that “by His stripes we are healed” and that God has provided a cure for all our dis-eases. He did not create Peter, with his character and vocation, specifically for me; but then He did not create penicillin specifically for me either, and I have every right to thank him when my sinusitis clears up after a course of it. It seems logical that I can thank him for Peter.

You are about to complain that, today of all days, I haven’t even mentioned the Resurrection. What do you think I have been talking about all this time? Because our whole life is in the image of the Lord who died and rose again. We have been buried together with him in our baptism, and we rise with him to glory. But for us it is usually a long process, and at every moment he is with us and gives us the help we need, with us himself and with us in the companions he has given us for the way. We do not go to God alone, but in that great company, spread through time and space, which makes up the Church Militant. For my companion is not St Peter in glory, but Simon son of Jonah, surnamed Peter, struggling on earth, together with me, both of us led, not in spite of but by way of our weakness, to the glory of the Resurrection.

Alleluia!