Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Good News for Those who’ve Blown It

By

File:The Denial of Saint Peter-Caravaggio (1610).jpg

Image: Caravaggio
You can live with Christ in the closest possible

Intimacy; have a Spirit-given breakthrough

Understand that he is the Son

Of the Living God, know

He speaks the words of eternal life.

You can see him on the mountain, transfigured.

And then… babble,

Something about building booths,

Because you don’t know what to say

But you must say something.

And so bossily,

Despite having seen him transfigured,

You decide to take charge, and take him aside and rebuke him

When he tells you that suffering was always part of the plan,

And you get called Satan,

Not long after you have been called blessed.

And then…what you can do,

Is declare you will never ever fall away from Jesus,

Even if everyone else does,

And then you do just that….deny him

Three times.

 And then, when Jesus gives you another chance,

You blow that too,

And instead of contemplating your fate

Which Christ has just revealed to you.

What you do is competitively obsess over John’s fate!

* * *

You can love Christ for many years,

And be 83 pounds overweight,

You eat in a sloppy, unthinking way; eliminate exercise

Deal with your feeling through food.

You can lose your temper with some regularity; take offence,

Write people off. Of course you can!

* * *

Your vessel of clay may be different,

Alcoholism perhaps; drugs; an abortion; divorce,

A sexual history so chequered you’d rather not think about it,

Or perhaps you been good for so long,

That you feel very bad and angry inside.

* * *

It’s not the vessel of clay that counts,

It is the treasure within.

Your simple love for Christ,

Your desire to follow him,

Though you, so often, forget him.

For one day, your vessel, my vessel, Peter’s vessel

Shall all be cast away on the scrap-heap of discarded things,

And what matters shall shine forth: the treasure within:

The heart he always loved; the heart that loved him back,

Though it got side-tracked–so very often.

 

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Comments

  2. LA says

    One comment, it’s harder to step from one post to the next…there is no “previous” or “next” post navigation that I can see when you’re in the individual post as I am now to comment.

  3. LA says

    It came easily because it’s perfectly Christ-driven. It came from that treasure within!

    I love the fact that Peter is the character in the story to give us perspective on our own failings. The only sad part is that he doesn’t go far enough. Working in prison ministries, one discovers that in order for that whole “if he can love Peter, he can love anyone” to work for repentant violent crime convicts, Peter needs to be a whole lot worse. For them, Peter is the bottom of the line of Jesus’ patience and love and they realize they fall far, far shorter. I do wish that Jesus had given us at least a few more examples of actively loving people who had done really awful things. But Peter is a good way to start the conversation.

  5. Anita Mathias says

    Thank you, Claudia for your visit, and thank you too for following me on Facebook. Glad you liked the post. It came easily!