Peter's isn't the only great acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ, & interestingly enough, though tradition has it that MK 'gets his information' from Peter, here in MK there's no recognition of Jesus praising him as in MT. Was Peter still ashamed at his failure to acknowledge Jesus in his Passion?
(Thomas 13 is an interesting (amusing?) sidelight on the incident or a similar one.)

Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama's penetrating comment that 'Jesus does not carry his cross like a businessman carries his lunch box' (No Handle on the Cross, SCM, London, '76, p.1) sticks with me more than any other comment on Jesus' challenge to us to take up our cross. Koyama nailed it in one! Yet despite what Jesus says, & K's discernment, I still keep trying to stick a handle on my cross to make it easier to handle. In an ongoing, vain (in both senses!) attempt to save my skin.

What I'm really trying to do, like 'ol Blue Eyes', is 'do it my way'. And it brings me undone. I stumble in my following. Often. Fortunately Jesus, always a step or several in front of me, picks me up by one means or another, dusts me off, puts my cross back on my shoulder, & lovingly sets me on the path again. When I think he's turned the next corner, I go back to trying to affix that handle! Trying to save my life! When the way Jesus sees things is that what I'm doing is trying harder & harder to lose it.

What is 'being saved' anyway? Depending on where we're coming from, we'll give a range of answers to that, most of them pious. One that makes sense, to go back to Koyama's imagery, is to stick at carrying such a rough thing as a cross, splinters, weight, shape, threat of death & all, trustingly & hopefully & without any handle at all.

P.S. Did Jesus say somewhere, maybe in JN, "I am the handle!"?