installed as messiah, peter s probably very excited about the role he s going to play in jesus reigning over israel. so jesus and his disciples are having this lovely meal together. it has a great feeling of, you know, conviviality, very lovely and intimate, and all of a sudden, jesus just comes from this completely unexpected direction. this is my body, which is given for you. do this in remembrance of me. jesus breaks bread in the last supper as an about the of symbolism. he says that he breaks this bread in order to illustrate that his body too will be broken.
he s talked about as someone who takes the mission to other jews. but did peter take jesus message to the heart of the roman empire? according to christian tradition, he did. this is ponta sant-angelo, and it s a very famous bridge in rome, and it s lined with large statues of angels on either side, but if you go to the end of the bridge, you see that there s a big statue of peter there. it shows him in a very traditional way, and he s holding a set of keys. these are the metaphorical keys of the kingdom of heaven that jesus gave peter when he entrusted him to build his church upon this foundation. of all the apostles, peter is the most important one. he comes to be emblematic of this city. his statue, his image, is at every key juncture, and it s
companions. peter s the most human of the disciples because he just reacts off the cuff all the time, shoots from the hip. so he s hot headed. he has a bit of a temper of him. he ll say things which he then regrets. he changes his mind about things. he s the most three-dimensional of the disciples. significantly, according to john s gospel, early on in his ministry jesus renames peter. peter s actual name is simon, or simeon, and he appears to have been renamed by jesus, and he s renamed peter, or kephas, in aramaic, and this is the word for rock, and it seems to be that he s nicknamed rock because in spite of all peter s failings, he s the one that jesus trusts to be the rock at the heart of the movement. jerusalem. after spending many months preaching around galilee, jesus,
the scene where the resurrected christ appears to peter is one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole gospel. remember, peter has denied jesus. you would think that the person that you had betrayed you would want to shrink from, but peter does just the opposite. rather than being embarrassed, he goes towards him. so it s a sign that he really knows who jesus is, he knows that he is going to be forgiven. do you love me more than these? yes. do you love me? you know that i love you. do you love me? lord, you know everything.
tradition, at some point in the 50s, peter went to rome, and he evangelized there. let us pray. to examine the christian tradition that places peter in the eternal city, nicola denzey-lewis has come to the e catacombs of san-sebastian, central rome. it used to be called an ancient basilica. and alongside one part of the basilica, there was a dining hall, where people would come and do feasts for their dead ancestors on particular days, and by the 4th century, we know that they started also coming on the feast day associated with peter, and they would scratch things into the walls, and we can still see these walls today, and deep beneath us, when people were first excavating this, they discovered the remains of a