Jesus Is Denied by Peter

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

While Jesus is being interrogated inside, Peter is in the courtyard below. Three times — first by a servant girl, then by another, then by bystanders who notice his Galilean accent — he is identified as a follower of Jesus. Three times he denies it, the third time with oaths and curses. "And immediately, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter" (Luke 22:60-61). Peter went out and wept bitterly.

Luke's detail — "the Lord turned and looked at Peter" — is one of the most devastating and consoling moments in the Gospel. In the middle of a night of legal proceedings and violence, amid his own suffering, Jesus finds Peter. He does not shout at him; he simply looks at him. And in that look, Peter remembers the prediction Jesus had made at the Last Supper, and he goes out and weeps bitterly. It is a look that contains both the truth of what Peter has done and the mercy that will restore him.

This station is placed on the Scriptural Way of the Cross because Peter's denial is not a peripheral event — it is a mirror. Peter had declared at Caesarea Philippi: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). He had sworn at the Last Supper that he would go to prison and to death rather than deny Jesus. And then a servant girl's question in a dark courtyard unmade him. We are Peter. We know the truth. We have made our promises. And we have failed to keep them. The look of Jesus that recalls Peter to himself is the same look he turns on us.