Even now he was not humbled, but in spite of his desertion in Gethsemane, he trusted in his shaken courage to face the unknown hazards of the courtyard of the high priest’s palace.  So far, however, from atoning for his conduct in the Garden, it now needed only a word from a maid servant to make the chief Apostle deny all connection with the Master to whom he had so recently pledged his loyalty even at the cost of life itself.

When the ill-favoured company, in which he now so unwillingly found himself, gathered round him, he gave way completely and, as St Mark tells us, he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear on oath, “I do not know this man you are talking about” (NRSV, 14:71).  And at that moment the crowing of the cock, which heralded the dawn of Good Friday, was carried to him on the breeze (Matthew 26:74), and for the second time Jesus looked fixedly at Peter.  And Peter, his pride now humbled at last, went out and burst into tears (Luke 22:61, 62).  It was thus that he came to the moment of truth.

And it was that Peter who was the Rock on which the Church was built, not Peter the proud, so sure of his own judgement and ability, but Peter the humble who had learnt to know himself as he really was.