But Peter, now hopelessly involved in lies, began again to protest that they had mistaken him for another and that he was not one of the friends of the Man.
At this very moment Jesus, bound among the guards, crossed the courtyard after His colloquy with Annas, passing to the other part of the palace, where Caiaphas lived: and He heard the words of Simon and looked at Him. For just one moment He turned His eyes upon Simon, those eyes where Simon, denying Him now, had once recognized the gleam of divinity. For an instant only He looked at him with eyes whose gentleness was more unendurable than any contempt. And this look pierced for all time the pitiable, distracted heart of the fisherman. To the day of his death he could never forget those sad, mild eyes fixed on him in that terrible night; those eyes which in one flash expressed more and moved him more than a thousand words.
“Thou also who wast the first, of whom I hoped most, the hardest but the most zealous, the most ignorant but the most fervent, thou also, Simon, the same who cried out my true name near Cæsarea, thou also who knowest all my words and hast slept with thy head on my cloak and hast kissed me so many times with those lips which now deny me, thou also, Simon Peter, son of Jonas, deny me before those who are about to kill me! I was right that day when I called thee a stumbling block and reproached thee with thinking not like God but like men. Thou mightest at least have fled away as the others did if thou hadst not the strength to drink with me the cup of infamy which I had foretold to thee. Flee away now that I may see thee no more until the day when I shall be truly free and thou shalt be truly made over by faith. If thou fearest for thy life why art thou here? If thou fearest not, why dost thou deny me? Even Judas at the last has been more faithful than thou: he came with my enemies, but he did not deny that he knew me. Simon, Simon, I foretold that thou wouldst leave me like the others, but now thou art more cruel than the others. I have pardoned thee from my heart. I am about to die, and I pardon him who brings me to death, and thee also; and I love thee as I have always loved thee, but canst thou forgive thyself?”
Under the weight of this look, Simon hung his head and his heart beat furiously in his breast. Not for his very life could he have brought out another “No.” His face burned with an intolerable heat as if the brazier before him had been the mouth of Hell. He was torn by an unbearable tumult of passion and of remorse; in one breath he seemed frozen, in the next all his body flamed. A moment before he had said that he had never known Jesus, and now it seemed to him that he had spoken truly, that at this moment he knew Him for the first time: that he finally understood who He was, as if those eyes full of loving grief had pierced him with a flash like an archangel’s sword.
He was scarcely able to drag himself to his feet and to stumble out to the door. As he went out into the street in the silent, solitary darkness a distant cock crew. This gay, bold note was for Peter like the cry which awakens a sleeper from his nightmare. Then in the dim light of dawn the last stars saw a man staggering along like a drunkard, his head hidden in his cloak, his shoulders shaken by the sobs of a despairing lament.
Weep, Peter, now that God mercifully grants you the grace of tears, weep for yourself and for Him, weep for Judas, your traitor brother; weep for your fleeing brothers, weep for the death of Him who is dying to save your poor soul, for all those who will come after you and who will do as you have done, deny their Saviour, and who will not pay for their redemption by repentance. Weep for all the apostates, for all the others who will deny Him, all those who will say as you have said, “I am not one of His disciples!” Who of us has not done at least once what Simon Peter did? Who of us, born in the Church of Christ, having prayed to Him with our childish lips, having knelt before His blood-stained face, has not said, fearing a mocking smile, “I never knew Him.”
Thou at least, unfortunate Simon, although thou wast Peter the rock, wept bitterly and hid in thy cloak thy face convulsed with remorse. And before many days Christ risen from the dead will kiss thee once more because thy perjured mouth has been washed clean forever by thy tears.
THEN THE HIGH PRIEST RENT HIS CLOTHES
Caiaphas’ real name was Joseph. Caiaphas is a surname and is the same word as Cephas, Simon’s surname, that is to say, Rock. On that Friday morning’s dawn, the Son of Man was caught between those two rocks like a grain of wheat between two millstones. Simon Peter is the type of the timid friends who knew not how to save Him: Joseph Peter, of His enemies, determined at any cost to destroy Him. Between the denial of Simon and the hatred of Joseph, between the head of the church about to disappear and the head of the Church just coming into existence, between those two rocks Jesus was like wheat between the mill-stones.
The Sanhedrin had already come together and was awaiting Him. Together with Annas and Caiaphas who presided, there were John, Alexander, and all the reeking scum of the upper classes. As a rule the Sanhedrin was composed of twenty-three priests, twenty-three Scribes, twenty-three Elders, and two Presidents, in all, seventy-one. But on this occasion some were absent, those who had more fear of an uprising of the people than hatred for the blasphemer, and those few who would not lift a finger to condemn Him, but would not defend Him openly: among these last were certainly Nicodemus, the nocturnal disciple, and Joseph of Arimathea, who was devoutly to lay Jesus in His tomb.