He had forfeited his patrimony on becoming one of the sect of Christians, and he had then no Gentile friends to help and to pity him, yet he was content; for, as he tells us in his Epistle to the Philippians, he esteemed "all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord."
Meanwhile, St. Peter had visited the different towns and villages, and at length, reaching Joppa, took up his abode in the house of a man named Simon, by trade a tanner.
There, one day at noontide, as he reclined in Eastern fashion upon the housetop, he turned his heart to God, and, forgetting all earthly things, became absorbed in contemplation.
A feeling of intense, supernatural hunger came upon him then, and as his friends prepared food, he fell into a rapture, and saw the heavens open, and a sheet descend which contained animals of every description.
St. Peter had the strong Jewish regard for the distinctions of the law concerning the clean and the unclean, therefore when a voice directed him to kill and eat of these animals, he answered, "Far be it from me, for I never did eat anything that is common or unclean."
A second time the voice spoke to him. "That which God hath cleansed do not thou call common," it said; and when this mysterious vision had been three times repeated, the sheet was drawn up to heaven again.
In the same manner that the Jews avoided eating such food as the old ceremonial law of Moses deemed unclean, so they shunned all intercourse with the Gentiles as an unclean nation. This remarkable vision was God's way of teaching St. Peter that the prejudices of his life must be laid aside, and as fully as grace was poured out upon the Gentile world, so he must also admit them to all the blessings of the Christian Church.
While St. Peter pondered over this wondrous revelation of God's Will, two servants and a soldier came to the tanner's house, and asked if one Simon, surnamed Peter, was lodging there.