God has endowed us with free will so that we can choose freely and willingly to love or reject Him. With this gift of free will, we manifest His divine image by our rational ability to choose good over evil. At the same, God recognises that with this freedom comes evil choices, as both Judas and Simon Peter demonstrated. For on the same night, the former betrayed Him, the latter denied Him.

However, Peter was moved by Jesus' gaze in a graced encounter with the Lord. In humility, he confronted the truth of his despondency. He repented and relied on God's grace and loving kindness to redeem and renew him. Whereas Judas despaired, Simon Peter's sorrowing led him to hope and recover a sense of God's infinite mercy and compassion, and that made the life-saving difference. Judas was prideful and depended on himself. He felt he was beyond the reach of God's mercy and forgiveness and ended up hopeless and in despair.

God is ever ready to forgive. The way of the spiritual life and the path to holiness, as lived by countless Saints, is to be of poverty in spirit in acknowledging our own brokenness and sinfulness, and reliance on God's abounding mercy and love. In Peter, the Lord teaches us not to idly presume His mercy nor to despair in our sinfulness. In Jesus, Peter took refuge.