Peter

Simon Peter is the most vividly drawn of all the apostles — impulsive, passionate, flawed, and utterly transformed by grace. A fisherman from Bethsaida, he was the first called by Jesus, the first to confess Christ as the Son of the living God, and the first to whom the risen Lord appeared among the Twelve. He was also the one who sank in the waves when his faith faltered, who drew his sword in Gethsemane, and who denied knowing Jesus three times on the night of the crucifixion.

It is precisely this combination of ardent faith and spectacular failure that makes Peter so compelling. Jesus did not choose a perfect man as the rock on which to build his Church; he chose a man who knew what it meant to fall and to be lifted up again. After the resurrection, beside a charcoal fire on the shore of Galilee — echoing the fire where Peter had denied him — Jesus asked three times, Do you love me? and three times commissioned him: Feed my sheep.

Catholic tradition holds Peter as the first Bishop of Rome and, therefore, the first Pope. He preached at Pentecost, opened the Church to the Gentiles through the baptism of Cornelius, and was martyred in Rome under Nero, crucified upside down by his own request because he considered himself unworthy to die as his Lord had died. Peter teaches us that the Church is not built on human perfection but on repentant, stubborn, unshakeable love.