The Twelve: Peter

The night before the choice He spent praying on the mountainside that they who were in the heart of the Father would also be in His own. When morning broke, He came down to where His disciples were gathered and, man by man, called those whom He had chosen. Of Peter the most is known. Peter is mentioned 195 times; the rest of the Apostles only 130 times. The one mentioned next in frequency to Peter is John, to whom there are 29 references. Peter's original name was Simon, but it was changed by our Blessed Lord to Cephas. When he was brought to Our Blessed Lord:

He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, You are Simon son of John. You shall be called Cephas (that is, Peter, the Rock). John 1:42

The word Cephas meant "rock"; we do not get the full flavor of it in English, because Peter, the proper name, is not the same as our word "rock." The words were identical in the Aramaic which Our Blessed Lord spoke, just as they are in French, where the proper name Pierre is the same as pierre, or rock. In Scripture, whenever God changed the name of a man, it was to raise him to a higher dignity and role in the community to which he belonged. Our Lord might have been saying to Peter, "you are impulsive and fickle and unreliable, but one day all this will be changed; you will be called by a name that no one would dare give you now -- Rock Man." Whenever he is called "Simon" in the Gospels, it is a reminder of the Apostle's uninspired and unregenerate humanity; for example, when he was sleeping in the garden, Our Blessed Lord addressed him:

Asleep, Simon? Mark 14:37

Peter had by nature great qualities of leadership. For example, after the Resurrection when he said, "I go a fishing," the other Apostles followed suit. His moral courage was manifested when he left his business and his home for the Master; that same courage, expressed impetuously, made him smite off the ear of Malchus when the leaders came to arrest Our Lord. He was boastful too, for he swore that though others would betray the Master, he would not. He had a deep sense of sin, and he begged the Lord to depart from him because of his unworthiness. His very faults endear him. He was deeply attached to his Divine Master. When other disciples left, he maintained there was no one else to whom they could go. He had courage, for he left his wife and his business to follow Our Lord. To the credit of his mother-in-law, it must be said that Peter showed no regret when Our Lord cured her of a serious illness. He was impulsive to an extreme degree, guided more by feeling than by reason. He wanted to walk on the waters, and given the power, became frightened and screamed in fear -- he a man of the sea. He was an emphatic man, swinging swords, cursing, protesting against the Savior washing his feet; though named head of the Church, he had none of the ambition of James and John. But through the power of his Divine Master this impetuous man, as fluid as water, was turned into the rock on which Christ built His Church. The Divine Savior constantly linked Himself verbally with His Heavenly Father; but the only human being He ever united with Hmself and spoke of Himself and that one as "we," was Peter. From that day on, Peter and his successors have always used "we" to indicate the unity between the invisible Head of the church and its visible head ...

Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen