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Saint Romanos Melodios (?-c 560)
composer of hymns
Hymn 34 (SC 128, p.111f.)

Peter's denial

O Good Shepherd, you who have laid down your life for your sheep (Jn 10:11), come quickly, O holy One, and save your flock...

After the meal Christ said: “Children, my dear disciples, this night you will all deny and abandon me” (cf. Jn 16:32). And since all were seized by the same astonishment, Peter exclaimed: “Even though all deny you, I shall not deny you. I shall remain with you and die with you, crying out to you: Come quickly, O Holy One, and save your flock.”

“Master, what are you talking about? I deny you? I abandon you and flee? And am I no longer to remember your call and the honor you have shown me? I still call to mind how you washed my feet and now, do you say: “You will deny me”? Once again I see you coming, carrying a basin, you who uphold the earth and support the sky. With the hands that fashioned me my feet have just been washed, and do you now assert that I will fall and I will no longer cry out to you: "Come quickly, O Holy One, and save your flock ?”...

At these words man's Creator answered Peter: “What are you saying, Peter, my friend? You will never deny me? never flee from me? never reject me? I, too, would wish to think so. But your faith is unstable and you do not stand up to temptation. Do you not you remember how you might nearly have drowned had I not stretched out my hand to you? You most certainly walked on the sea as I did myself, but immediately you hesitated and quickly gave way (Mt 14:28f.). Then I ran towards you who were crying aloud: "Come quickly, O Holy One, and save your flock."

“See, from now on I tell you: before the cock crows three times you will deny me and, letting yourself be attacked on all sides and your spirit submerged as by the waves of the sea, you will deny me three times. You who cried out to me then and are about to weep, you will find me no longer now extending my hand as before, for I shall be using it to write a bill of remission on behalf of all Adam's descendants. My visible flesh I will take as my paper and my blood as ink to write out this gift, which I endlessly distribute to those who cry aloud: "Come quickly, O Holy One, and save your flock!”