"The Crucifixion of St. Peter"

Michelangelo, after he had finished painting the Sistine Chapel, was commissioned to work on the Vatican’s Pauline Chapel. On the two main walls, he painted the conversion of Paul and the crucifixion of Peter.  In Michelangelo’s painting, Peter is being lifted up but as he is being lifted up,  he strains his neck to look at you. It’s as if Peter is asking, “Are you ready to die for Christ? Are you ready to follow Jesus all the way from your Galilee to your Golgotha? Are you ready for the cost of discipleship?” That’s the lesson that Peter had to learn.

This “cost of discipleship” is the significance of Michelangelo’s painting, which he painted at the height of the Reformation. Michaelangelo knew the Pauline Chapel was used by the popes and that Mass would be offered there by the cardinals of a conclave before entering the Sistine Chapel to elect a new successor to Peter. The cardinals would, and unto this day can, look out and see Peter, craning his neck in pain, stretched out on the cross, looking at them as if to say, “Which one of you wants to be pope? Are you ready to be a good shepherd, even if it means dying for your flock? Because this is where it could lead.”