The Catholic Accent Podcast

12 - Peter Preaches with Power: The First Proclamations

• Diocese of Greensburg • Season 2 • Episode 2

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A fisherman without formal training changed the world with his voice—and not because he mastered technique. We dive into Peter’s proclamations in Acts and unpack why his words “cut to the heart.” The story isn’t about polish; it’s about proximity to a living Jesus who rescues, restores, and then sends us to speak with courage. Along the way, we trace Peter’s journey from rash disciple to reliable witness, and we explore what gave his preaching unusual force: personal encounter, honest repentance, and a clear invitation into a concrete way of life.

Together we map Peter’s simple template—the kerygma—and translate it for today. That means testifying to what God has done in our own lives, naming the gap we can’t bridge on our own, and announcing Christ’s death and resurrection as God’s decisive answer. Then comes the invitation: turn toward God, receive baptism, keep Christ’s commandments out of love, and live the sacraments as a living memory that makes Jesus present. We talk about how this looks in daily practice—small public signs of faith, quiet acts of love in inconvenient places, and the courage to let the Holy Spirit lead us beyond comfort so that others can find life.

If you’ve wondered how to share faith without sounding scripted, this conversation offers a path that’s both simple and demanding: speak from encounter, challenge with love, and invite a real response. Hear why testimony beats technique, how to make history come alive as hope, and where to begin this week. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

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Jordan Whiteko, Father Andrew Hamilton, Father Christopher Pujol, Vincent Reilly, Cliff Gorski, John Zylka, Sarah Hartner

SPEAKER_01:

You're listening to the Catholic Acting podcast. We discuss the acts that Jesus performed that stunned his disciples. Great to be back, Jordan.

SPEAKER_02:

You don't know us by now, you're never gonna know.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm Jordan Waco here with Father Hamilton and Father Poogil. And we're both stunned. Why don't we get started? We'll jump right in with today's topic is the proclamations of Peter. So through the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter gives many powerful speeches to large crowds of people, you know, starting on Pentecost. Can you set the scene for how these speeches would have taken place and why they would be so impactful? You know, there's no microphones or loudspeakers, but he proclaims the core message.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think first we have to look at who Peter is. You know, by trade, he's a fisherman. He's really not educated. And so to put him in front of these crowds had to have been grace-filled moments on his part. Because in his mind, he's thinking, how can I possibly do this? Which goes back to uh Isaiah. I'm way too young. I don't have the words, I can't speak. And the Lord gave Isaiah the ability to preach and to bring people to repentance.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, if we remember from last season, too, uh, because I said I related to him the most, he's always putting his foot in his mouth. So now, how is that like strongly agree that that's who you are? Yes. So how has that changed for him now? You know, like it's he's he's now, as we said, the rock, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but he he recognizes that he's the rock insofar as that his connection to Christ, right, who is the one who is the chief cornerstone and the foundation laid and built upon, which is the church, entrusted to Peter. But we can think back to Jesus walking on water and Peter getting out, right, to start to walk on water. And there, what happens? Peter starts to look at everything else and all the anxieties of the world, and he loses focus of the one thing necessary, which is Jesus, and then he begins to sink and he yells out, save me. But that kind of repentance brings him back then to the strength of Christ. And so that's really the gospel message, Jesus' words, repent and believe in the gospel. I just want to make mention of though, like as Father Chris said, which is a great insight. Imagine Peter being a fisherman, he's not an orator. In the time of Jesus, being an orator and being able to speak well was a sign of authority and power, especially. Because we didn't have all these other mediums that came to us through YouTube and television and so on and so forth. So, in many ways, you had to be a good speaker if you wanted to get your name out there and the message out there. And so rhetoric was so important in the time.

SPEAKER_00:

Peter had none of this training. He had no ability of his own rather than the grace he received from Christ.

SPEAKER_02:

And seeing Jesus preach himself.

SPEAKER_01:

Sarah, can you run and get some marbles for us to practice that?

SPEAKER_00:

I was thinking the same thing.

SPEAKER_01:

You were thinking the same thing? Um, sorry, I was talking to our studio audience up there. Uh so you know, P Peter uh is very pointed in his speeches. Acts chapter two, uh, verse 37 tells us that the people who heard Peter speak were cut to the heart. Yeah, that to me doesn't sound like we were talking the the foot and mouth anymore. Why? Why were they cut to the heart?

SPEAKER_02:

He spoke from the heart and he spoke about the things that he had experienced in Jesus Christ. It's one thing to just go out and preach a message. Somebody can write a homily for me, and I could present that information maybe in an interesting way. But if it's not my material, if it's not coming from my experience, it doesn't really come off authentically. And so it doesn't cut through to actually change lives. It's just a nice idea.

SPEAKER_01:

Do people write your homilies for you? Yeah, I actually have Father Chris writes my homies. Okay, well, that's another priest. Don't say him like you're gonna read one of mine if I write it for you, what that's well, probably with a lot of editing, yes.

SPEAKER_02:

But uh nonetheless, like with that, what we see is that Peter is really speaking about not just Jesus as an idea of a philosophy, but rather he's really talking about Jesus in his incarnation as a living being who's speaking to the people about the ways in which they need to reconcile with God and then continue to be encouraged and inspired by God.

SPEAKER_00:

And you know, this is our first season back since our late Holy Father Pope Francis has died in return to the Lord. And something that Francis spoke about so consistently was that idea of accompanying one another and encountering. And so Peter is that that first example of he would go before the crowds and speak of his encounters with Christ from the very earliest days from he caught when he called him from the seashore. I mean, imagine having Peter sitting here telling us about the night him and Jesus were traveling and sitting around the fire waiting for dawn, and the words that Jesus would have spoken, words that you know we know that not everything is accounted for in the scripture. And so Jesus Peter's preaching was sharing those deep encounters with Christ, things that we can't even begin to wrap our minds around. And so they're cut to the heart, just like Christ's harp was opened up for us. And so I think that's where Peter's preaching really found its strength and its its veracity to go forward.

SPEAKER_02:

And this is a nice distinction to I wanted to be a history professor potentially before I was doing history free law, so on Indiana Jones. Yeah, right. Another shout out to him from last season adventure. But uh I just wanted to be a politician. History teachers are either excellent or they're completely terrible. And it's very boring, right? Because you can speak about things that happened in real time in the past just as a story that's there. But if you can make things come alive in a real narrative form that like it actually happened in this way with these effects, these consequences, and these reactions to it, now you have history that's living. And Jesus was alive. And so this is the way in which Peter was speaking about that which he knew and what's so important for us to look at Peter's proclamations, the way that he spoke, and to say, how do we continue that today? Because we have a lot of years that we're separated from that early church, but how do we actually understand the way in which that they live things out, the way in which that their leaders preached and spoke about the living Jesus, rather than just a Jesus of antiquity or history past?

SPEAKER_01:

St. Peter has a pattern in his preaching, right? So what is that template that Peter provides?

SPEAKER_02:

He's not an academic preacher. Okay, so the way that Peter's really preaching is he's preaching from his own life experience of Christ, how Christ has converted him and brought forth fruits in his life that are now shared with others. In a big word, we would call that charismatic preaching, the charygma, the way in which that the living Lord has had a real effect in my own life, and here's my life. Look at it and see what God has done for me. And so often we can tend away from that towards just maybe academic formulas and so on and so forth. It's important that we have to know the teachings of the church. We have to know God, to love God, to serve God. All of that is true. But Peter is really talking about what he's been in in his own life, which is a grave sinner who doesn't even trust, right, at different times where he's walking with the living Lord and yet he still falls away. He tries to tell him not to go to Jerusalem. And what does Jesus say to Peter? Get thee behind me, Satan. That Jesus looks over at Peter after he denies him, and he just gives him that glance of disappointment, somebody so close to him that has fallen away. But then he gets that same loving glance and embrace there on the shores of Galilee after the resurrection of Jesus, and that brings him back into the fold. And so what Peter is doing in preaching is he's getting people to recognize their own fallenness that they need to be saved. That's the beginning of the good news of the gospel, which is we're stuck without God coming down, incarnating and saving us by his grace, we can't make it to heaven. The gates aren't open. We can't climb that mountain ourselves.

SPEAKER_00:

The rift between uh humanity and divinity was so divided by the first sin, original sin, that even though the Lord through his prophets continued to give us ways to turn toward him, the sacrifices of animals was never enough. It would only be the sacrifice of Christ that would move us and open us into God's kingdom. But Peter, after he gave this personal experience, this testimony, he then challenged other people. And I think something today that we lack is we're afraid to challenge others. So it's more important to challenge others to say, God did this in my life. Imagine what he can do in yours, but you have to take that step.

SPEAKER_02:

And seeing the great love of God, which is presented, then in response, what should we do? We should love. And Jesus very clearly at the Last Supper and throughout his farewell address to his closest disciples, the apostles, he says, If you love me, keep my commandments. And what does Jesus command them to do?

SPEAKER_00:

To come together one another.

SPEAKER_02:

To love one another, but to do so in certain ways that the early church does, which is through the Eucharist, the things that have been handed on, do this in remembrance of me, in memory of me.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's a living memory, a memory that that calls Christ present again, that amnesis.

SPEAKER_02:

And earlier that he gave them the church to go out and do what? But to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and preach the good news of salvation. And so as they come to a recognition of their own sin by Peter's preaching, what they've done to the Lord by their sin and the great love that God has for them, what's the answer to that? To love God back through baptism and then a continued life in the church, keeping the commandments of Jesus morally, and then living out the sacraments that are there in the early church.

SPEAKER_01:

So what are some of the takeaways? How how can we hear the proclamation of Karygma today?

SPEAKER_00:

I think first and foremost, we we're all on different journeys, right? And we're all in different places in our lives, spiritually, emotionally, professionally. For a person who doesn't have a relationship with Christ, their first step is going to be to hear who Jesus is. It doesn't mean they're immediately going to take that step of conversion. For Father or I, we still have to live out lives of conversion because we're human. Nothing in us is made perfect except in heaven. And so we have a daily task to find ways that we need to change for the better. So each person has a place and not everybody is going to be at the same level. And that's the beauty of Christianity because it is a community and there's room for everybody.

SPEAKER_02:

I think the way that you live out charisma today is you choose to die for the love of Christ. There's a great adage that says, where you die, life will spring forth. Think about Jesus on the cross. His death actually gives life. It's paradoxical. This is what happens a lot through sacred scripture and throughout Christianity. But for me as a priest, what that looks like is going to places that I don't want to and laying down my life there is an image of love.

SPEAKER_00:

He's not talking about his new assignment.

SPEAKER_02:

And then from there springs life, people seeing that image. That's the charisma. That's the conversion of heart that's continually going on and the difficult work of the gospel. And the more that we entrust ourselves to God, the Holy Spirit will prompt us to do things that are difficult, but that are life-giving.

SPEAKER_00:

And it could be as simple as taking the step to pray before your meal in a restaurant. Are you afraid to make the sign of the cross in public? If you are, then you need to ask for the grace to have that strength to do it because that is a witness. That is a type of character charismatic response in the midst of a non-Christian world. And so, how is it that we show ourselves as Christians to others? It isn't always a formal teaching or formal homily. Father and I can preach Sunday after Sunday to the same crowds of people. But look how many more people we reach through this podcast. I might preach to 300 people on a weekend, and when you hit publish, we get thousands of views and thousands of listeners. And so what is it that we are called to do to reach others? It's to preach the good news that God has come to earth out of love for us. And now we are called to love him in return.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe to our show. This is a good quote. It's often misattributed to Francis of Assisi. Saint Francis never said this that we know of, at least, right? But preach the gospel always and use words when necessary.