Triduum: Friday, Facing the Fire

The teacher had been arrested in Gethsemane and brought here to the high priest. A few of his disciples followed but others snuck off into the night. I guess I could hardly blame them. So much happened so quickly and there was a growing mob calling for violence against him. I didn’t get it. Had they never met him? He had done nothing to deserve this.

I was young and small so people paid little attention to me. Now the one called Peter stood in the courtyard, warming himself by the fire. I hid behind him but he knew I was there. A woman — the gatekeeper — approached and looked at him, tilting her head, first one way and then the other, as if she had seen him before.

“You’re not one of his disciples, are you?” 

He said, “I am not.”
 
Wait, what? I tugged at Peter’s garment.  I thought maybe he hadn’t heard the question correctly.

“You told him you would never…” I whispered, but he shushed me and pushed my hand away. I left his side and wandered the courtyard. I pushed my way into another area where a small crowd gathered around Jesus as the high priest questioned him about the things he taught.

“I have no secrets,” Jesus said calmly. “Everything I have spoken has been spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area where all the Jews gather, so why don’t you ask them what I said.”

They didn’t like his answer. Someone hit him. “Is this the way you answer the high priest?”

Again, he is calm.

“If I have said something wrong then tell me what I said. But if I’m telling the truth, why hit me?”

It was hard to argue with that, so they sent him away. I walked back over toward Peter, just as another person questioned him. 

“You are not one of his disciples, are you?”

Tell them the truth. Be brave.

“I am not.”

Someone else: “Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?”

Come on, Peter.

“No.”

I looked at Peter and saw the sadness and dejection in his eyes. We both remembered the words Jesus spoke at supper: “Will you lay down your life for me? The cock will not crow before you deny me three times.”

I counted them. So did Peter. Had I been older and in his position it could have been me. We stood in silence, waiting.

And the cock crowed. And Peter wept.  And I wondered. 

Note: A number of years ago, when I was praying my way through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, I “met” a younger version of myself in my prayer and journaling, and it is still a practice I return to from time to time. This adolescent perspective for some reason allows me to see in new and clearer ways just what is going in me when I read and pray with the stories of Jesus. So this is my imagination and my “reading between the lines” of scripture, although I’ve tried very hard to not change the meaning or impact of the original words. They are powerful on their own.