Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
February 1, 2015
Spiritual Ponderings
St. Peter’s Fall and Reconciliation

The month of February can be a very long month for many of us despite it being the shortest of months in terms of actual calendar days. All the festive holidays are over with and all we have to look forward to at this point is the beginning of Lent. I thought for this month’s Spiritual Ponderings I would focus on the Apostle Peter and in a special way his denial of Christ and his return to grace. I desire to do this for two reasons, the first is that on February 22 ^nd we will celebrate the feast of the Chair of St. Peter and secondly I believe his story is an awesome story of conversion which can inspire us to make this upcoming Lent more meaningful.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen in his book The Priest is not His Own said this about St. Peter: No other Apostle arouses so much sympathy in the priest’s heart as Peter. He seems very close to each of us in his conflicts and emotions, his strength and his weakness, his resolve to be heroic and his disastrous failure to live up to his aspiration. At one moment he is humble, at another proud. He affirms fidelity to his Lord, then denies Him. He is so supernatural, yet so very weak and natural. He extols as divine the Master he loves, only to be frightened by a servant girl into saying that he does not know “the man”. No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and the weakest link in the entire apostolic chain was the first link, Peter—and the Son of God holds on to that . Hence the “gates of hell shall not prevail.”

As we take a deeper look at St. Peter’s denials of Christ we will use Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s book: Characters of the Passion: Lessons on Faith and Trust. Quotes from the book will be in bold and my commentary will be in regular font. In this book Archbishop Fulton Sheen helps us notice five steps that ultimately lead to St. Peter’s denials of Christ: 1) Neglect of Prayer, 2) Substitution for Action For Prayer, 3) Luke warmness, 4) Satisfaction of material wants, feelings, and emotions, and 5) a need for Human Respect.

1. Neglect of Prayer
No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with the Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one’s own self-sufficiency.

Every good person is close to becoming a bad one and every bad one is close to becoming a good one. Our freewill allows us to decide to live a moral life or not but our free will does not allow us to determine if an action is a moral one enough. Prayer helps us to know the Creator’s will for us and thus gives us a better chance of making choices that are moral.

Fr. John Bartunek in his book: A Guide to Christian Meditation has this to say about prayer: “Prayer as its most basic level is conversation with God. This seems obvious, but it harbors an awesome reality. To converse with someone implies that that someone wants to pay attention to you, otherwise you have a monologue, not a conversation. The mere existence of prayer implies that God is paying attention, that he is interested in spending time with you.”

We would all be excited if someone famous wanted to sit down and talk with us. Why is that so many ignore the opportunity to develop a deep friendship with God? Prayer should always be a priority in our lives.

Further on in his book Fr. Bartunek points out: “Christian meditation differs essentially from transcendental meditation and other New Age centering techniques. Christian meditation is Christ-centered, a loving dialogue between Christ and the soul that deepens your friendship with Christ. It starts with the Holy Spirit urging you to pursue a greater knowledge and love of Christ and ends with your renewed commitment to follow and imitate Christ in the unique circumstances of our daily life.

Transcendental meditation, on the other hand, is self-centered. Instead of a dialogue with God, an opening of the soul to God, it consists primarily in calming the many passions of the soul, creating a self-induced interior tranquility and focus that overflows in certain types of feelings. The goal of transcendental meditation is to withdraw from the complexities of life in order to experience emotional tranquility the goal of Christian meditation is to know, love, and follow Jesus Christ more completely to discover and embrace God’s will for you more and more each day.”