{"id":2032,"date":"2006-05-17T11:21:24","date_gmt":"2006-05-17T11:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/peters-spiritual-journey.html"},"modified":"2006-05-17T11:21:24","modified_gmt":"2006-05-17T11:21:24","slug":"peters-spiritual-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/peters-spiritual-journey.html","title":{"rendered":"Peter’s Spiritual Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Like Peter at the beginning of his journey with Jesus, \u201cwe too want God to transform the world right away, \u201c but it was the Teacher himself who showed the first amongst the apostles and all Christians \u201cthat the path to the heart\u2019s transformation\u201d. The figure of Peter and the exacting law of following Christ require that, if necessary, we give up the whole world to save our souls, something best illustrated in the events surrounding the life of the Galilean fisherman. <\/p>\n

Pope Benedict XVI today talked about this topic before a multicoloured and, thanks to the bright sun, festive crowd of 45,000 that had gathered in St Peter Square for the general audience. <\/p>\n

White-Blue flags of Bavaria mixed with White-Red flags of Poland; the Yellow-Red flags of Spain mingled with the Yellow-White flags of Ukraine. Groups were distinguishable by the colours of dyed hair, white, yellow or blue or singled out by the multicoloured people waved.<\/em><\/p>\n

With today\u2019s thoughts, Benedict XVI has begun a reflection on the apostles. He began with Peter who, \u201csecond only to Jesus, is the better known and most cited character in the New Testament\u201d.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The Pope focused however on the Peter\u2019s role in the life of Jesus, starting with his calling, when he announced that \u201che would a fisher of men\u201d.<\/p>\n

A married fisherman, Peter was \u201cmoved by a \u201csincere religious interest\u201d. In the Gospels Simon appears as someone who is decisive and impulsive, prepared to argue his points of view going so far as resorting to the use of force (see the episode of the sword in John<\/em>, 18: 10). At the same time though, he is naive and timorous, and yet honest to the point of sincere repentance (Matthew<\/em>, 26: 75). <\/p>\n

The Gospels enable us to follow him as he makes his way along his spiritual path. The starting point was Jesus\u2019 calling\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cTrusting in the working presence of God in the history of his people, but pained that he could not see His powerful action in the events that he witnessed, [. . .] Peter wanted a Messiah who was a \u2018divine man\u2019, someone who would fulfill people\u2019s expectations by taking a path of humility and suffering. The alternative was clear: either privilege one\u2019s expectations by rejecting Jesus, or welcome Jesus in the truth of His mission, putting aside our, oh so human expectations\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe figure of St Peter,\u201d the Pope said extemporaneously at the end of his speech, \u201cis for us a source of great consolation. Like him we want God; we too want to be generous, but we also want God to be strong and transform the world according to our ideas. Instead, God chooses another path, that of transforming the heart in suffering and humility. Like Peter we must convert in order to understand that it is God that shows the path.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I imagine the fulltext should be up at Zenit later today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Peter at the beginning of his journey with Jesus, \u201cwe too want God to transform the world right away, \u201c but it was the Teacher himself who showed the first amongst the apostles and all Christians \u201cthat the path to the heart\u2019s transformation\u201d. The figure of Peter and the exacting law of following Christ…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPeter's Spiritual Journey - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/peters-spiritual-journey.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Peter's Spiritual Journey - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Like Peter at the beginning of his journey with Jesus, \u201cwe too want God to transform the world right away, \u201c but it was the Teacher himself who showed the first amongst the apostles and all Christians \u201cthat the path to the heart\u2019s transformation\u201d. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}