Was He There – St. Peter – When They Crucified Our Lord ?

There is no certain answer to the question, “Was St. Peter present when Jesus was crucified?”

None of the Gospel accounts says that Peter was at the foot of the cross or on Calvary as Jesus died. We are told that Mary and John the apostle were there, along with many women, including the “three Marys,” Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James, and Mary of Clopas.

Odds are Holy Scripture would have mentioned any other apostle who was there, but no apostle, other than John, is said to have been there on Calvary.

In all the Gospel accounts of Peter’s denials of Jesus, there is no statement that he went away or hid or that he was not at Calvary; but from this it cannot with certainty be concluded that he was or was not in the crowd at Calvary that witnessed the crucifixion and death of Jesus.

One can believe, and hope, that Peter was there. Other than a personal belief that Peter must have been, or probably did, secretly and silently, witness the death of Jesus, there is one statement, in the Gospel of Luke, which could support such a belief:

And all his acquaintances, and the women that had followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things. (Luke 23:49).

In one of his epistles, Peter said he witnessed the sufferings of Jesus:

The ancients therefore that are among you, I beseech, who am myself also an ancient, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ: as also a partaker of that glory which is to be revealed in time to come. (1 Peter 5:1).

Peter did not say specifically he was there for the crucifixion and death of Jesus, nor did he mention that he had denied he was His disciple.

Many scripture scholars assert that the Gospel of Mark is based on Peter’s eyewitness testimony.  This would mean that Peter himself told Mark about his public denials of Jesus – something one would have done who had repented for such actions, and then been enlightened by the Holy Spirit. It would also mean that Mark may have gotten some details of Jesus’s crucifixion and death from Peter.

Peter The Ultimate Hypocrite ?

In the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that Peter said this to people in Jerusalem when they are amazed at his healing of a crippled beggar:

But Peter seeing, made answer to the people: Ye men of Israel, why wonder you at this? or why look you upon us, as if by our strength or power we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus, whom you indeed delivered up and denied before the face of Pilate, when he judged he should be released. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you . . . Be penitent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.  . . To you first God, raising up his Son, hath sent him to bless you; that every one may convert himself from his wickedness. (Acts 3:12-14; 19;26; emphasis added).

Either St. Peter was one of the worst reptilian, pharisaical, vipers as were those hypocrites condemned by Jesus, or he was himself a contrite person who knew what it was to have denied Jesus and then experienced His forgiveness.

St. Peter’s public speech in Jerusalem after he had received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost indicates that he was not being hypocritical. In that speech, Peter repeats what he said when Jesus asked the apostles “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 15:15-16; and Mark 8:27-29):

But Peter standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spoke to them: Ye men of Judea, and all you that dwell in Jerusalem, be this known to you, and with your ears receive my words. . . . And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. . . . Therefore let all the house of Israel know most certainly, that God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus, whom you have crucified. (Acts 2:14,21,36).

In his response to these men then asking Peter “What shall we do? (Id. 31), Peter tells them what one who has denied Jesus is to do:

But Peter said to them: Do penance, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins: and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are far off, whomsoever the Lord our God shall call.  And with very many other words did he testify and exhort them, saying: Save yourselves from this perverse generation. They therefore that received his word, were baptized; and there were added in that day about three thousand souls.”(Id. 38-41).

These are not the words of a hypocrite or a liar. These are the words of man who himself has done penance and who has received the “gift of the Holy Ghost.” These are words of a man who can say, from his heart, “been there, done that,” a man who is not only talking the talk, but who is walking the walk of one who, having publicly denied Jesus, now publicly – without fear of what the high priests and the Romans might do to him – is proclaiming Him to be God and the people’s Messiah.

When Peter denied Jesus, Jesus looked at him.  In that look Jesus told Peter He had known what Peter was going to do and He had told him what he was going to do.  Peter wept, but he did not go out and hang himself like Judas. That look from Jesus may have been all Peter needed to go on and to watch, maybe from afar, Jesus’s passion and death.

Whatever the case, we do know that he was the first at the tomb on Easter Sunday and the Book of Acts reports that it was Peter who directed the other apostles in the selection of a replacement for Judas. St. Paul refers to the fact that, after His resurrection, Jesus first appeared to St. Peter before appearing to the other apostles (1 Corinthians 15:5) . It is difficult to think that Jesus would have done this had St. Peter not been truly sorry for his denials of Jesus.

Finally, St. Peter, the leader of the early church after Jesus’s ascension, the only apostle to walk on water with Jesus, spent nine months in prison, chained to a column in an upright position, but he stayed loyal and faithful to the end. Two of those who were his jailers, Praetorian guards Processus and Martinianus, were, according to tradition, baptized by Peter with waters from a spring that miraculously appeared in the prison. In all humility, he asked to be crucified upside down, saying he was unworthy to die as Jesus did.

It is difficult to believe that he had heard from another about the death of Jesus.