Walking the faith

As St. Peter shows us, the path is full of ups, downs, and requires rescue

By Bee Goodman

Like many things in my life, this column came from an unexpected experience that ultimately created a need to research more and more about the Catholic faith. Before I can reveal the saint for this column, I must explain how I got here.

Long story short, divine intervention. Before working for the Diocese of Knoxville, I had almost no knowledge of Catholicism. I had one Catholic friend, Audrey Pallendino, a parishioner at All Saints in Knoxville, whom I’d met in college. We had talked about our personal faith lives but never a detailed discussion. She shared in my excitement when I told her about my decision to convert to Catholicism, which wasn’t something I planned on doing.

In reality, I planned on not converting. I had a very rough time in college. I have struggled with anxiety and depression, but like most young people, it struck harder when I moved out for college. I hadn’t been praying as much, and when I did, I was asking God for terrible things. Eventually, I stopped praying altogether and denied Christ completely. In 2019, I attempted to take my own life and had a near-death experience. For seven minutes I had no heartbeat and wasn’t breathing. I share that not to scare anyone but because it was the most painful experience of my life, and it also gave me the most beautiful thing.

I was transported back to my great-granny’s house. Standing in her kitchen, she shook her head at me and told me, “You ain’t big ‘nough yet.” Behind her was a blinding light that took over the whole room, and a silhouette walked through it toward me. I couldn’t see the features of this person, but they reached out their hands to me. When I held it, I could feel the roughness of the scars on their hands. When I realized I held the hands of Christ, I woke up. I began to pray again and started making changes in my life. I decided to leave teaching and go into communications. Eventually, I walked into a church again for the first time in years and kept going back every week.

After graduating and moving back to East Tennessee, I lay in bed one night, remembering my struggles, and I began to talk to God. I said, “OK, God, you delivered me through this. Do it again.” I told God that I wanted to be His servant and that I would go where He led me. As I sat at home searching for jobs, I was relentlessly hit with the same recommendation over and over again: the multimedia reporter role for the diocese. I admit I scrolled past it several times, as I was a non-denominational Christian at that time, and what I knew of Catholicism was slim. But as this position continued to show up, I began to see God’s influence as more than an algorithm, and I knew this was where He was leading me.

I decided to participate in OCIA this year in order to learn more about the faith, as training for my job and not because I wanted to convert. In January, I attended the young-adult SEEK conference in Columbus, Ohio. During adoration, the priest carried the Eucharist through the crowd, and as he approached me I felt an undeniable sense of joy, but I also felt unworthy to look at the Eucharist. I looked at my friend and asked if I was even allowed to look. I was reassured that not only was I allowed to, but I was encouraged to look and encounter Christ. I began to cry and looked up through my tears, and it didn’t take anything more than that for me to know the Truth. So, I began OCIA and learned about the faith, no longer as training but as preparation for receiving the Eucharist, and I was told I’d need to find a confirmation saint.

As I began to research different saints, I came across many stories of individuals who lived holy lives. I was so inspired by Simon of Cyrene and how he changed after looking into the face of Christ that I felt like writing, and I thought some might be interested in learning along with me. And so these columns were born.

Several saints were suggested to me as well: St. Teresa of Ávila, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Lawrence because of my somewhat dark sense of humor, and St. Dymphna, the patron saint of mental illness. All fantastic contenders, but none felt right. While there is no one true confirmation saint and no wrong selection, I had yet to feel a particular connection to any one saint until Father Danny Herman visited my OCIA class one Sunday. Father Herman, who serves as an associate pastor at the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, shared that while he now has a great admiration for Padre Pio, he chose St. Peter at his own confirmation. Just upon hearing the name, I knew St. Peter was my confirmation saint. I went home and prayed on it, and I began my research.

As I prepare for my own confirmation on Nov. 22, I feel a closeness to St. Peter and the Eucharist that I never have before. During Holy Week earlier this year, I found myself missing the ability to take Communion like I had growing up in my Baptist church. Now I feel a literal thirst for the wine and the truth of Christ’s sacrifice in the body and blood of Christ. I have St. Peter to lay out the stones for the path the Holy Spirit is leading me on. The anxiety I shared with St. Peter has transformed into excitement and pride. I once told a friend that my depression was like the blindness trapped miners experience after being in the dark so long that I was no longer able to experience joy. Now I know that I had to reach that depth to find the true light.

The fisherman named rock

The man we know as Peter began as Simon, son of John, a fisherman from Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee. His brother Andrew first brought him to Jesus, who looked at Simon and gave him a new name: Cephas, the Aramaic word for rock. In Greek that becomes Petros, and in English, Peter. At Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus asked who the Apostles believed He was, it was Peter who answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus told him that upon this rock He would build His Church, and He handed Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

What appeals to me most about St. Peter is how human he was and how he saw Jesus most intimately as a friend. His friendship with Jesus is exactly what draws me to the Church. While Jesus named Simon as Peter, literally meaning rock, He built the Church to become a place where we each, no matter how many friends or family members we have, can find companionship in the Trinity through Christ.

The first step

St. Peter also was not perfect. He felt fear and anxiety just like I do. I relate to the story of Peter not only because Jesus saved Peter from drowning after doubting but because of how incredibly human it is to lose faith after taking the first steps.

The familiar story in the Gospel of Matthew tells of the Apostles in a boat in the middle of a storm when Jesus comes toward them, walking on the water. Peter calls out, asking Jesus to command him to come. Jesus says one word: “Come.” And Peter climbs over the side of the boat and walks on the water. When we learn of this story, we’re told that Peter sank because his faith was weak. This is true. But Peter, in his fear, mustered the strength in the beginning and took that first step. Then he noticed the wind, and he began to sink. His prayer was only three words long: “Lord, save me!” Jesus reached out and caught him at once.

Many have said “the first step is always the hardest” but this is where Peter can prove that incorrect. The first step can be difficult but it is also the closest return to solid ground. Remaining in unwavering faith can be harder than just the first step. As a person who struggles with anxiety, I find myself needing Christ’s rescue often, even when I began with courage.

Denial and return

Peter’s failures did not stop at the water’s edge. On the night before the crucifixion, he swore he would never abandon Jesus, and hours later he denied even knowing Him, not once but three times. Then the rooster crowed, and Luke tells us that Jesus turned and looked at Peter. Peter went out and wept bitterly.

I was raised in a dedicated Baptist family and went to church every Sunday, but I am still human. I made mistakes, and for a portion of time I denied Christ just like Peter. And just like Peter, I was welcomed back over and over. I admit that in my worst depressive state I began begging God to take my life. I didn’t understand what I was really asking God for. My real desire was to be changed by Him, through a companionship I had yet to allow myself to find and was incapable of understanding at the time.

The Gospel of John gives us the other half of Peter’s denial. After the resurrection, Jesus meets the Apostles on the shore and cooks breakfast over a fire. Three times He asks Peter if he loves Him, one for each denial. The third time, Peter answers, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You” (John 21:17). Each time, Jesus gives him the same assignment: tend and feed My sheep. He did not ask Peter to explain himself or to earn his way back. He restored him and sent him out.

A friend of Christ

What calls me most to St. Peter is not his mistakes and humanity, but his close friendship with Christ. When I think of their friendship, I wonder what things they could have laughed about together, how that laughter could have turned into deep discussions, and how Peter could become so trusted by Jesus that he was asked to lead the Apostles and build the Church after Jesus returned to the Father.

I met my best friend in kindergarten, and after more than 20 years of friendship, I’d say we know each other’s hearts pretty well. I hope that my best friend can see my faults and know that despite them I want to be inherently good. But I doubt she would trust me to become the rock of the Church and be responsible for her people. Jesus had only known Peter for a few years before His death and resurrection, and in that time Peter had mouthed off, doubted Him, denied Him, and made mistakes over and over again. But Jesus still called Peter to lead the Church and work miracles. Through Peter, we see how Jesus can trust in us, and through his example I know Jesus trusts me to answer the call just as He trusted Peter.

The miracles of Peter

Peter also performed many miracles, which are described in the Acts of the Apostles. The Peter who sank in the waves is, after Pentecost, the same man who preaches so boldly in Jerusalem that about 3,000 people are baptized in a single day. At the temple gate called Beautiful, he meets a man who had been lame from birth, and in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, Peter commands him to walk. The man leaps to his feet. Peter raised a disciple named Tabitha from the dead. And when King Herod imprisoned him, chained between guards, the Church prayed for him, and an angel led Peter out past the locked gates. A man who once sank was lifted by the prayers of his community.

His presence is still felt in remarkable ways today. In 1939, excavations began beneath St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and uncovered an ancient burial ground directly under the main altar. Among the findings was a wall bearing a Greek inscription that has been read as “Peter is within.” In 1968, Pope Paul VI announced that bones found there had been identified as those of the Apostle. The resting place of a fisherman is still being found beneath the largest church in Christendom, just as Jesus said the Church would be built upon him.

St. Peter’s last words

The final words we have from Peter come at the end of his second letter, written when he knew his time was short. A man who knows he is running out of time does not waste his words. So, what does the fisherman, the denier, the rock leave us with?

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18).

The first instruction is to grow. Peter does not tell us to be perfect. He tells us to grow, and no one understands better than he does that faith is not a single step but a long walk with stumbling in it. Growth happens in grace and in knowledge: leaning on God’s mercy and coming to know Him more deeply, just as a friendship deepens over time.

Then comes the part that moves me most. Peter, who so often made the story about himself, ends by pointing completely away from himself. “To Him be the glory.” There is no mention of his miracles or the keys he was given. The man who denied Christ in a courtyard closes his final words by giving Christ all the glory.

The phrase “both now and to the day of eternity” holds two truths at once. “Now” means glory to God is not something we save for heaven. It belongs in our present lives, on the anxious days, in the storms, in the moments when we feel like we are sinking. “The day of eternity” looks forward to the day that never ends, when all of our weakness and wandering is behind us and we are with Him forever. The God who catches us now is the same God who will hold us for eternity.

Giving his all

Early Christian writers tell us that Peter eventually made his way to Rome, where he was martyred under Emperor Nero around the year 64 to 67. He asked to be crucified upside down because he did not consider himself worthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. The man who once denied Christ three times gave everything for Him in the end. The Church celebrates his feast with St. Paul on June 29, and the Chair of St. Peter on Feb. 22.

I chose St. Peter because I don’t have to pretend to be a finished product. He began with courage and sank. He loved with his whole heart and failed anyway. He was welcomed back every time. If Jesus could build His Church on a man like that, I trust He can do something with me, and that St. Peter can lead me to Him.

 

[Top photo: A statue of St. Peter holding the key to the kingdom of heaven is seen at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Adobe Stock]