Main news for 22 December 2025

Peter's denial has always been one of the favorite themes for preaching about sin and repentance. Usually in this case parallels are drawn with the denial of Judas, who perished not because he sinned, but because he proved unable to repent. Meanwhile, if one looks carefully at the situation, it is not hard to see that, in essence, everyone left Jesus except two, one of whom was Peter, and the other, if one follows early Christian tradition, John, the author of the fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation.

And one of them, Peter, in response to accusing testimonies, says about Jesus: I do not know Him. What preceded this? Why did the disciples scatter? They were by no means cowards, and when they promised to die for their Teacher, they were hardly speaking in the heat of the moment. But in practice everything turned out quite differently from what they expected. They thought the time for a messianic uprising had come.

They were ready to die in battle, and Peter, if it had come to war, would have been one of the first; it is no accident that he is the one who snatches out a sword at the critical moment. But it turned out that there would be no uprising, that their Teacher simply gives Himself into the hands of the representatives of authority, that everything is lost: the uprising failed without even beginning. After all, the apostles still did not fully understand what the Teacher had told them about His death and His resurrection.

Peter followed Him into the high priest's courtyard not because he was hoping for anything, but simply in order to be closer to the Teacher, to see how the matter would end, simply in order to remain with Him to the end. And here they accuse him of something, of some kind of participation in the preparation of some uprising. What significance does all this have now, when everything is over? Peter no longer has anything to witness to, nothing to hope for; by and large he no longer cares what people will consider him to be, for everything is already behind him.

His reaction is a rather ordinary reaction of a person who is being pestered with nonsense when he is occupied with an important matter. He brushes off the questioners as though they were annoying flies: leave me alone, I know nothing and no one! And only the rooster's crow brings him out of his spiritual stupor. Peter suddenly understands that the matter is not yet over, that everything they had spoken about so recently during the Passover seder remains in force, that everything in general has gone differently from what he expected, but... But he did deny the Teacher, and he denied Him publicly. This is a bitter and sorrowful fact.

Now all that remains for Peter is to weep, reproach himself for a betrayal unexpected even to himself, and repent of what he has done. He does not yet know that very soon the day will come when he will meet the Teacher, and He will understand him, understand him without long explanations.