A Hero for Our Time
All my life I have heard that, of the twelve apostles when the crisis came, one of them betrayed the Lord, and ten ran away, the chief among them denying that he even knew him. Paintings of the Crucifixion show Mary the mother of Jesus at the foot of the Cross, with Mary Magdalene, perhaps one or two of the other sorrowing women, and the Apostle John, who is young and beardless and for that reason, I suppose, of no concern to the Roman soldiers. Then came Pentecost, and the eleven, huddled in the upper room in Jerusalem, grew bold and cheerful in the Spirit, and they went forth and did as Jesus had commanded them when he last spoke to them at Bethany, in his risen flesh. They made disciples of all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19).
All this is true, yet it may be too easy for us to say—we who are not in danger of being sentenced to the protracted misery of the mines, or to the agony of the cross. Perhaps it is also too easy to say about those same apostles that they were transformed, no longer the slow-thinking, often-sulking, and danger-shying men they had been. They were a new creation, no doubt. But they were also the same men, in the same flesh, with memories that would haunt them or bless them till the day they died.
What must it have been like to be one of those apostles, and to know, years later, how little you understood of what Jesus had said, and how poor a part you had played in that brief time when he taught the people and wrought wonders among them? The apostles were heroic in a way we find hard to understand—heroic in self-knowledge, and duty, and love. We are encouraged at every pass to think well of ourselves, falsely. We are like Simon the Pharisee, who thought he had only smallish things to be forgiven—not like that woman with the ointment and the tears.
In Peter's Footsteps
You know you are in a different world when a woman writes a sweet hymn for children that warns them against that flattering unction. It is "Forsaken Once and Thrice Denied," by Cecil Frances Alexander, wife of the Anglican bishop of Ireland. We know Mrs. Alexander from such hymns as "Once in Royal David's City," "There Is a Green Hill Far Away," "All Things Bright and Beautiful," and "In Nazareth in Olden Time," hymns that speak simply and straightforwardly to the heart of a child. She learned Irish, too, and translated that mighty and manly poem attributed to Saint Patrick, the "Breastplate" song that begins, Atomruig indiu—I bind myself.
She was no comfortable, well-padded moralist, she. The money she made from selling her books of hymns—repeat those words again, my readers, and think of a world in which they could be written without surprise or irony—she gave to build and fund a school for the deaf and a home for women who had fallen into trouble.
So it is a vigorous woman of the Christian faith who asks us to walk in the footsteps of Saint Peter:
Forsaken once and thrice denied,
The risen Lord gave pardon free,
Stood once again at Peter's side,
And asked him, "Lov'st thou me?"
The melody for it in The English Hymnal (1906) is Childhood, which you may know from "It Fell Upon a Summer Day." The melody is lilting, even jaunty, with plenty of runs of eighth notes, and though it may seem not quite fit for considering our guilt and Peter's guilt, I think it works well—we are not supposed to be lugubrious, but alive and at the work of faith and hope and love. After all, the Lord himself both reminded Peter of his denial, and caused him to reverse the denial in three successive expressions of love.
Mrs. Alexander moves straightaway from Peter to us:
How many times with faithless word
Have we denied his holy name,
How oft forsaken our dear Lord,
And shrunk when trial came!
The rhetorical question admits no answer. We must ponder it in our hearts. How often do we, with a nervous smile perhaps, suffer the name of Christ to be smeared in our presence, or his person mocked, or betrayed to the cause of sin? And we say nothing, thinking as Peter must have thought when the maid heard the Galilean accent in his voice: "This is not the right time." Alas, it is never the right time, and always the right
time.
The Difference Between Peter & Us
The third stanza returns us to Peter:
Saint Peter, when the cock crew clear,
Went out and wept his broken faith;
Strong as a rock through strife and fear
He served his Lord till death.
Well then, that is the difference between Peter and us, says the poet. Peter wept bitterly; we do not. Peter served Jesus till the day he himself died upon a cross. What will we do?
Not much, if we are left to our own promptings:
How oft his cowardice of heart
We have without his love sincere,
The sin without the sorrow's smart,
The shame without the tear!
Another rhetorical question. The answer, of course, is that in the dull daily round of sin and half-measures and feeble love, we have all the time what Mrs. Alexander suggests. Whatever love we have for Christ is itself a gift of grace. We must beg for more—and we should consider our sins to be greater than Peter's, and more frequent. Not once, not three times, but every day:
O oft forsaken, oft denied,
Forgive our shame, wash out our sin;
Look on us from thy Father's side
And let that sweet look win.
Hearts Wrung & Won
When the risen Jesus looked at Peter and asked, "Do you love me?", it must have been with a countenance that wrung the apostle's heart. May our hearts then be so wrung—may we be won over by that grace.
The final stanza sums up the life of Peter, and our lives also:
Hear when we call thee from the deep,
Still walk beside us on the shore,
Give hands to work, and eyes to weep,
And hearts to love thee more.
The words could not be simpler, but then, what should we expect—all the tongues of men and angels? "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13).
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
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Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism by Hunter Baker
35.6—Nov/Dec 2022
on the Divine Promise Fulfilled by the Child of Bethlehem by James M. Kushiner
19.1—January/February 2006
on Death & Seven of the Last Words of Socrates by Graeme Hunter
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