'But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not;
and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.'
--Luke xxii. 32.
Our Lord has just been speaking words of large and cordial praise of
the steadfastness with which His friends had continued with Him in
His temptations, and it is the very contrast between that
continuance and the prevision of the cowardly desertion of the
Apostle which occasioned the abrupt transition to this solemn appeal
to him, which indicates how the forecast pained Christ's heart. He
does not let the foresight of Peter's desertion chill His praise of
Peter's past faithfulness as one of the Twelve. He does not let the
remembrance of Peter's faithfulness modify His rebuke for Peter's
intended and future desertion. He speaks to him, with significant
and emphatic reiteration of the old name of Simon that suggests
weakness, unsanctified and unhelped: 'Simon, Simon, Satan hath
desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.' _There_ is
a glimpse given, a corner of the curtain being lifted, into a dim
region in which faith should not refuse to discern so much light as
Christ has given, because superstition has so often fancied that it
saw what it only dreamed. But passing from that, the words before us
seem to me to suggest a threefold thought of the Intercessor for
tempted souls; of the consequent re-illumination of eclipsed faith;
and of the larger service for which the discipline of fall and
recovery fits him who falls. Let me say a word or two about each of
these thoughts.